


Fact or Fiction

by Mertiya



Series: Wizards' School [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Magic: The Gathering
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Manipulation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/F, F/M, HP: EWE, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Teenagers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-16
Updated: 2017-02-10
Packaged: 2018-09-09 00:43:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 60,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8869201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mertiya/pseuds/Mertiya
Summary: It's Ral Zarek's sixth year at Hogwarts.  And everything would be fine if Jace wasn't totally occupied with his new girlfriend, to the point where it's honestly kind of weird, and Ral's starting to be concerned.  Now if only everyone would stop telling Ral he's just jealous and LISTEN to him...after all, he's NOT just jealous, right?





	1. Prologue

            _Eight years before Jace Beleren arrived at Hogwarts…_

            “Hurry up, can’t you!” Bellatrix Lestrange snarled at the nearest Death-Eater, a short, fat wizard who cringed away under her sudden attention.

            “I-I’m sorry, Madame Lestrange, we’re working as quickly as possible.” He ducked his head. “As you know, the charms are numerous, and our best records indicate they were put in place by Merlin himself.”

            “The Dark Lord does not care for excuses,” Lestrange said sweetly. “Work faster, or I will see that you can no longer work at all.”

            “Yes—yes, Madame, of course.” His face was invisible behind the metal mask he wore, but dark sweat stains were visible along the armpits of his black robe. He turned back to the work crew. “Faster!” he called, in a voice fearfully climbing to a new octave.

            As Lestrange watched, the circle of witches and wizards tightened around the massive block of stone that lay in the center of a fairy circle, almost hidden by moss and heather. As someone took a too-eager step forward, hot white light flashed, and the unfortunate witch screamed, staggering backward.

            “ _Stupefy_!” Bellatrix snapped her wand out and knocked out the woman who had tripped the trap, not allowing her to leave the circle. The stench of burning flesh filled the air. “It seems we missed one,” she said lightly, tracing an intricate rune in the air with the tip of her wand. Blood red smoke seeped from the fairy circle, swirling slowly and lazily toward her. “Interesting,” she squealed excitedly. “Merlin, Merlin, Merlin, you have so _many_ beautiful tricks up your sleeves!”

            “Madame Lestrange—Karloff is—”

            “Yes, yes, that’s not important now. I think this is the last one.” She focused, licking her lips, mouthing the words to an especially complicated spell. In some ways it was lucky these protections were so old, because it meant that in the centuries since they had been put in place, a number of people nearly as clever as Merlin had worked out ways to get around them. In other ways, well—some of these were so old that they had been caught unawares. Bellatrix’s lips curved into a smile. She could certainly appreciate the viciousness of some of Merlin’s techniques. And they hadn’t lost too many people.

            The smoke darted upward suddenly, and she caught it on the end of her wand, grimacing faintly. A burning sensation ran up her arm, halting at her Dark Mark and twisting around it. She shook off the pain, flicking her wand again, and now a streak of white crept down her wand and into the smoke, diffusing slowly at first, then faster and faster. There was a loud, explosive noise, and the ground beneath the fairy ring cracked open. Bellatrix let out another excited screech. She’d been _right_. The Dark Lord would be so pleased with her!

            “ _Eorthstyr_ ,” she gabbled happily, jabbing her wand at the stone inside the fairy ring. “Get back!” she snapped at the surprised Death-Eaters, and they scattered.

            Beneath the pressure of her wand, the stone in the center of the fairy ring melted to mud and began to drain away, revealing a casket of clouded glass several feet below the ground. Etched into the center was unmistakably the seal of Merlin, and beneath it, a few lines of something that was probably Welsh. Bellatrix frowned in concentration, whispering beneath her breath as she translated, “ _Do not awaken the sleeper in stone_.” She laughed. “Sorry, Merlin, I don’t take orders from wizards who have been dead for more than thirty years.” She stepped forward, ignoring the mud that clung to the bottom of her robe, and held out her wand, knocking it loudly against the casket three times. “ _Rennervate maxima!_ ”


	2. Defense of the Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is much awkwardness, and Ral is concerned.

_Beep-beep-beep. Beep-beep-beep._ The loud sound in Elspeth’s ear dragged her eyes open and had her out of bed and clutching for her wand before she remembered where she was, sighed, and collapsed back with a groan. Every single morning. This entire summer. _Every single morning_.

            Despite the fact that she had been staying at Ral’s house for over two weeks now, she still hadn’t gotten used to the alarm clock. It wasn’t as if it was that much louder than the bell at school, it was just blaring and angry in a way that did not agree with her brain, although she had to admit it was very good at getting her out of bed. Of course it also meant she tended to start the day with mild heart palpitations.

            After she had brushed her teeth and her hair, she pulled on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, which she actually did prefer to robes, and headed down the stairs for breakfast. “Good morning, Natalka,” she said, and Ral’s mother looked up briefly from her newspaper.

            “Good morning,” she said. Natalka Zarek was a professor of history at Oxford University, and despite being a compact, intimidating woman, she had been very supportive when Ral asked if one of his best friends could stay with them over the summer as part of her independent project for Muggle Studies. The first week at Ral’s house had been significantly more challenging than Elspeth had thought. The Zarek household’s technology had not adapted well to having two young, powerful wizards near it, and Elspeth and Ral had spent a significant amount of time down in Ral’s parents’ workshop in the basement, Ral trying to finesse some of his favorite items into working, Elspeth just reading up Muggle children’s science books so that when she was around the rest of the house, she could manage to get the basics to function.

            “Eggs, Betta?” Alexei Zarek, Ral’s father, stood over the frying pan. A professor of music at Oxford, he also made the best fried eggs Elspeth had ever had, and never seemed to remember to call her anything but ‘Betta’. Elspeth had stopped correcting him after the first week and a half. Ral seemed to find it hilarious anyway.

            “Thanks, I’d love some,” she answered, then headed over to the window to check whether she’d received an owl the night before.

            She had. The large, tawny bird shuffled sleepily along its perch on the window outside the Zareks’ kitchen and fixed her with one golden eye. When she had started exchanging letters with her pen pal two years ago, Achilles had been standoffish and hostile, even trying to peck her fingers once or twice. Now he butted her hand affectionately and nibbled at a stray strand of hair. Elspeth headed to the freezer and liberated one of the dead mice she kept there for him. He took it and swallowed gustily as she removed the letter from his claws.

            “I’ve got one for you to take back to her as well, all right? Just a minute.”

            Though normally Elspeth left her letters for her pen pal on her desk, she had been tired enough the night before to forget her most recent one on the desk in the cellar. She clattered down the stairs and glanced around, trying to remember where she’d been writing it. There was light streaming out from under the door of the workshop, and Elspeth shook her head, sighing, then headed in.

            Sure enough, Ral was collapsed over the old laptop at a desk in the corner. The electric light in the corner of the room flickered as Elspeth came too close, and she checked her jeans and pulled a face when she realized she still had her wand in her right-hand pocket. Ral wouldn’t have been happy if she’d come near the computer with it. Wands tended to drain energy rather indiscriminately from their surroundings—there were some technical details that Elspeth wasn’t really interested in, but Ral and Professor Granger went into raptures over. She paused and leaned her wand carefully on the wall inside by the door and then went over to shake Ral awake.

            Usually, Ral was impossible to wake up, especially when he’d stayed up until three A.M. tinkering in the workshop, but today, his bloodshot eyes flew open as soon as Elspeth touched his arm. There were great dark circles under them, and Elspeth paused to think she really needed to get him to start sleeping. No matter how much Ral enjoyed theatrically complaining that he hadn’t been able to sleep because he had “too many ideas”, he usually didn’t look this bad.

            Ral grabbed her shoulder and dragged her toward him, and Elspeth instinctively opened her arms. The amount of physical contact in their relationship was probably a bit unusual, but Elspeth and Jace both tended to require physical grounding at times, and Ral’s immigrant family was more prone to casual touching than most. Usually, it wasn’t Ral who made a wordless, desperate plea for comfort, but there was nothing unclear about the motion now.

            Elspeth found herself pulled into his lap as he wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her shoulder. Wordlessly, she stroked his head and made a soft, comforting noise. They sat like that for several minutes before Ral heaved a huge sigh and looked up at her with a forced smile. “Sorry,” he mumbled awkwardly. He half-moved, but didn’t quite push her off, instead making an abortive leaning-up motion so that his face was just inches away from hers.

            There had been a few other similar awkward moments over the summer. Actually, Elspeth was surprised that they hadn’t been more awkward. She was fairly sure that sixteen was well past when crazy teenage hormones were supposed to be kicking in, but she hadn’t really noticed many. Certainly not around Ral or Jace, and she didn’t really get physically close to anyone else.

            This ought to be awkward, but mostly she just felt—

            Ral kissed her. Okay, now things were awkward. She tried to kiss back, more out of a feeling that she probably should than out of any real desire on her part. It didn’t quite work. Ral’s tongue definitely ended up in her mouth, and she managed to get one hand on the back of his head, but it just felt—off. It was too much like snogging her brother, which was a disturbing enough thought for her to stand up quickly, pressing her hand to her lips. Ral was doing the same thing.

            “Oh, shit,” he said.

            “Um,” said Elspeth. “I don’t think—”

            “I think I’m gay.”

            “What?”

            “I mean, you’re—uh—you know—attractive and stuff,” Ral blurted. “But kissing you just doesn’t—do it.”

            Elspeth stared at him and then thought of the warm feeling in the pit of her stomach when she opened a letter from her pen pal. “Oh, Merlin,” she said limply.

            “Did I break your heart?” Ral asked, and he sounded so pitiful that she burst out laughing. He scowled at her. “Hey, I was legitimately worried!”

            “I think I might be gay, too.”

            “ _What?_ ”

            Elspeth bit her lip. “It never really occurred to me before? But it makes some sense. My pen pal—”

            “—that you never shut up about—”

            “—just like you never shut up about Jace—”

            “—hey, I may be gay but I’m not crushing on my best friend!”

            She raised her eyebrows at him.

            “Much.” Ral sulked, turning back to the computer screen. “I’ll be up for breakfast in a minute.”

            “All right.” Elspeth reached out and ruffled his hair, snagged the envelope of the end of the desk, and was turning to go when Ral grabbed her wrist.

            When she looked back, he was studiously staring at the desk. “We’re, uh, good, right?”

            “Of course,” she said immediately. “Just don’t try to snog me again.”

            “Yeah, there’s no chance of that.” He paused. “Uh, no offense.”

            “Just get yourself up for breakfast before I come back down and hit you with a spoon.”

~

            Ral chewed on his lip as he watched Elspeth clatter out of the room. Well, that could have gone worse. What the fuck had he even been thinking? He turned moodily back to his laptop and clicked over into the Pidgin window he’d fallen asleep staring at last night.

            **Littleboyblue7900 (June 30, 9:15 pm)**

france is beautiful

            **nivmizzetdragonspet (June 30, 9:16 pm)**

how are you?

            i miss you

            **Littleboyblue7900 (June 30, 9:16 pm)**

            i made a new friend

also there’s a lot of good food

            **nivmizzetdragonspet (June 30, 9:16 pm)**

trust you to pay attention to important things

            i bet you ate so much chocolate you got sick

            **Littleboyblue7900 (June 30, 9:17 pm)**

i didn’t get that sick

            **nivmizzetdragonspet (June 30, 9:17 pm)**

oh my god you did

            what did ranna say

            **Littleboyblue7900 (June 30, 9:17 pm)**

my mum was very nice about it

            **nivmizzetdragonspet (June 30, 9:19 pm)**

did you tell her that elspeth and i had to hold your head over the toilet after last new year’s while you threw up three chocolate puddings and five butterbeers

            **Littleboyblue7900 (June 30, 9:19 pm)**

are you blackmailing me :P

            **nivmizzetdragonspet (June 30, 9:20 pm)**

of course not, i’m just reminding you to be grateful to me ;)

            **Littleboyblue7900 (June 30, 9:21 pm)**

that sounds more dangerous than blackmail

            i miss you too ral <3

            **nivmizzetdragonspet (June 30, 9:23 pm)**

did you seriously send me a fucking heart beleren

            are you saying you fancy me :P

            **nivmizzetdragonspet (June 30, 9:30 pm)**

haha

            **nivmizzetdragonspet (June 30, 9:43 pm)**

jace?

            did you fall asleep on the keyboard again?

            **nivmizzetdragonspet (June 30, 9:50 pm)**

did ranna take you out to a play?

            i was just fucking with you, you know that right

            **nivmizzetdragonspet (June 31, 10:23 pm)**

okay i’m going to assume you fell asleep

            **nivmizzetdragonspet (June 31, 1:48 am)**

mate you’ve got to stop doing that

            **nivmizzetdragonspet (July 2, 4:04 am)**

hey are you alive out there?

            you can send me an owl if your computer’s fucking up

            **nivmizzetdragonspet (July 3, 3:57 am)**

for fuck’s sake jace

            why the hell did you stop getting back to me

            **nivmizzetdragonspet (July 3, 5:17 am)**

sorry for snapping

            i miss you

            **nivmizzetdragonspet (July 5, 6:00 am)**

sorry if i made you mad somehow

            just get back to me

            **nivmizzetdragonspet (July 6, 2:38 am)**

hi?

            **nivmizzetdragonspet (July 7, 9:45 pm)**

Hi?

            **nivmizzetdragonspet (July 8, 3:43 pm)**

hello?

            **nivmizzetdragonspet (July 9, 4:47 am)**

jace why aren’t you responding to me anymore

~

            Hermione stood in a corner, trying to tug discretely at the hem of her short red dress. Why she had thought a Muggle cocktail dress was a good outfit to wear to a DA reunion, she was honestly unsure. There was a small, niggling part of her that suggested that she had been trying to make Ron jealous, which was stupid, since they hadn’t been an item in over seven years. She hadn’t really talked to him since, either. Oh, they had corresponded—stilted, formal letters inquiring how the other person was doing, etc, but their friendship had never really recovered. Ron was Harry’s friend now, a thought which made Hermione sigh and reach for her glass of champagne.

            She didn’t want to be Ron’s girlfriend, she knew that, and that had been all that had been on her mind all those years ago, when she stormed away from him after the shouting match they’d had in front of Draco. She hadn’t thought about the fact that she did, in fact, still want to be his friend. Losing that hurt, as if the last of her childhood had been ripped away.

            There he was. Hermione’s heart jumped into her throat. Ron was wearing nicely-trimmed black robes, his hair was combed, and he looked almost put-together. He looked across the room, eyes landing on Hermione, and he gave her a cautious half-smile. Hand clutching at her glass, Hermione found herself rapidly downing her champagne. The alcohol burned in her throat and landed with what felt like a physical thump in her stomach. No, she was definitely not ready for this meeting. Time to go.

            One last glance at Ron—she saw that his face had fallen with disappointment and a little frustration, and she felt a twinge of guilt, but it wasn’t enough to stop her from making a beeline for the lady’s washroom, where she leaned dizzily against the wall before remembering that she was probably get her nice new dress all dirty.

            “Oh, hello, Hermione,” said a gentle and surprisingly unsurprised voice. “I didn’t expect to see you hiding in the loo as well.”

            Hermione nearly jumped out of her skin. She whirled around to see Luna Lovegood perched with the seat down in an open stall, her knees drawn up to her chest.

            “What are you doing here?” Hermione asked, then realized that the question came across as sounding rather more accusatory than she had intended, but Luna just blinked at her, pursed her lips, and let her eyes wander up to the ceiling as if she were thinking very hard.

            “I got nervous,” she said eventually. “I think it was a little silly, really, but I just didn’t want to see everyone after all.”

            “We haven’t really been all back together in years,” Hermione agreed. “It’s quite odd.”

            “Yes, and I think Ron was looking for you,” Luna agreed, genially.

            Hermione winced. “I ought to talk to him…” she hedged, then swallowed. “I suppose I want to, but at the same time, I really don’t.” Luna nodded, her gaze still fixed slightly to the side of Hermione’s ear, and Hermione suddenly wondered if Luna was nervous to see her as well. “I apologize, I didn’t mean to intrude,” she said awkwardly.

            “Well, it _is_ a public restroom.” Luna twisted a hand in her long, blond hair. “Someone might have needed to use it, anyway.” She put her hands behind her head, now staring very definitely at the ceiling. “Hermione,” she said, and Hermione felt a strange jolt run through her. She hadn’t seen Luna in over a year now; although they had been sporadically meeting up for coffee since the war ended, Luna had recently gone on a long trip, drawn by her work as a naturalist, and Hermione hadn’t even realized she was back in Britain until she’d seen her name listed among the RSVPs for the DA reunion. Somehow, she felt as if she should have known.

            “What?” she blurted, realizing she had taken too long to respond, but Luna merely blinked and spoke as if there hadn’t been a pause.

            “Do you remember a few years ago when you asked me to do some guest lectures for the herbology students?”

            “Um,” said Hermione. “Yes, I think so.” Her mind was churning in odd loops. Surely the champagne shouldn’t have been that effective? She hadn’t eaten since breakfast, she supposed, but still…her gaze kept being drawn to Luna’s hair, like loops of fine gold puffed about her shoulders.

            “I said I didn’t have time,” Luna said. “I think I do now. If you still think that it would be helpful.”

            “Oh,” said Hermione, pushing herself into a standing position and stumbling a few steps toward her friend. “Yes, I think it would be quite a valuable endeavor.”

            Luna’s gaze flickered down, and Hermione felt as if she’d been struck as Luna’s grey eyes met hers. She put a hand out to steady herself, and the hand landed on Luna’s shoulder. Luna just kept looking at her, an unreadable expression on her thin face.

            Hermione shut her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said numbly, though she didn’t know what she was apologizing for. “I think I’ve had a bit too much to drink.”

            A faint sigh and a shaky laugh. “I’d better see you home.”

            “Thanks,” Hermione said, without moving her hand. Luna’s shoulder beneath it was round and warm.


	3. Emmara Tandris

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jace is thoughtless, and Ral is in no way jealous.

Ral stalked back and forth impatiently. “He said he’d be here!” he complained to Elspeth. “So where is he?”

            Two days before school reconvened and almost two weeks after Ral had despairingly given him up for dead, Jace had sent a hurried scrawl by owl saying that he’d be seeing them at Platform 9 ¾ before school started. Nothing else. Ral was torn between wanting to hug him and wanting to punch him for not apologizing. Honestly, who just dropped off the face of the planet like that? They’d been chatting _every fucking night_. And then nothing.

            “Calm down,” Elspeth said.

            “I’m calm,” Ral retorted. “I’m very calm. I’m just asking a perfectly simple question. Where the _fuck_ is Jace?”

            “Oh, yes, you sound calm.” Elspeth put a comforting hand on his back. “He’ll be here. He’s not going to miss the train.”

            “Of course I’m not going to miss the train.” Ral’s heart thudded once, hard, then jumped into his throat as Jace appeared through the brick wall separating 9 ¾ from the other platforms. With him was a girl that Ral didn’t recognize, a short, blond, very glamorous looking girl with a heart-shaped face, flawless makeup, and very large breasts. Ral’s heart sank, and then sank again as he saw that Jace and she were holding hands. “Hi,” Jace said with a smile.

            “Why didn’t you get back to me?” Ral snapped. The girl at Jace’s elbow flinched slightly at his strident tone, and Jace frowned.

            “I was busy,” he said vaguely. “Sorry.”

            “We were talking every night!” Ral was aware his voice was starting to rise. “You just _stopped_!” The wood of his wand was hot beneath his hand.

            Jace frowned again. “I’m sorry,” he said uncertainly. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

            Elspeth’s hand squeezed at Ral’s shoulder. “It’s fine, I’m sure you were busy,” she said, though she also sounded faintly disappointed.

            “Yeah,” Jace agreed, then looked back to the girl at his side, and Ral’s heart flopped down heavily into the base of his stomach at the expression that spread across his friend’s face. “This is Emmara,” Jace continued. “We met over the summer in France. She’s a transfer student. We, um, we’re—” _no no no don’t say it please Jace_ “—kind of dating.”

            Something burst into crackling heat around the base of Ral’s wand, and he jumped in surprise. The feeling—almost static electricity—brought another nagging worry to the forefront of his mind. “Where’s Kallist?” he asked suddenly. Sometimes the little cloud hid when he was nervous, but never for this long.

            “I left him at home.” Jace shrugged. “I didn’t really need him trailing after me this year.”

            “What the fuck?” Ral asked in bewilderment. “Jace, you don’t go anywhere without—”

            “He’s fine,” Jace cut in, sounding almost defensive, and the girl beside him—Emmara—squeezed his arm. “Look, don’t you want to say hi to my—to Emmara?”

            “It’s so nice to meet you,” the blond girl murmured, hanging on to Jace’s arm in a way Ral was pretty sure was geared to squash her breasts against it. “Jace has told me so much about you two.”

            Again, that strange sensation of crackling heat on his hand. “Nice to meet you, too,” Elspeth was saying. Ral mumbled something unintelligible about needing to use the loo, because he was starting to be afraid there was actually something wrong with him.

            “Be back in a minute,” he got out and practically ran for the lavatory door. Once there, he bent over the toilet, trying to decide if he was going to be sick. Or if he’d hurt his hand. He pulled it out of his robes and inspected both it and his wand, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. The hand should have looked swollen or something, Ral thought, but it didn’t. It was just tingling oddly now, feeling warm and overfull. He leaned his head against the side of the stall, trying to steady his breathing. His stomach was still hurting.

            The door of the restroom opened behind him, and he turned rapidly.

            “Are you okay?” Jace leaned awkwardly against the lintel of the door.

            “Of course I’m okay,” Ral snapped. “What about you?”

            Jace shuffled his feet. “You just ran off so suddenly,” he said. “Is your hand all right?”

            “It’s fine.” Ral tried to hide it automatically, but he was too slow. In another moment, Jace was in the bathroom, taking his hand in a way that was too gentle. Ral’s stomach lurched, and he hissed in pain. Pins and needles radiated outward in the wake of Jace’s hand.

            “Sorry!” Jace jerked back. “I just wanted to—um—”

            “Whatever, Jace,” Ral said harshly. “You were too busy with your shiny new girlfriend to message me. I get it.” The pins and needles feeling intensified, and he had to turn away, trembling, biting his lips against the harsher words that were threatening to spill out.

            “Emmara is amazing.” The sharp retort died on Ral’s lips as he looked up at Jace’s face. His friend’s face had slid into an almost goofy grin.

            “Guess you really like her,” Ral said, instead. “Let’s go back now. I’m fine.” This was stupid. He was being stupid. Of course Jace had a girlfriend. Why wouldn’t he? Jace was great. Any _girl_ would be lucky to get to date him.

            “She’s so cute and beautiful,” Jace sighed as they headed back out toward the train station. “And delicate. Everything about her is just perfect.” As soon as they came in sight of the two waiting girls, Jace practically ran across the station to attach himself to Emmara. Ral swallowed down the pain in his throat and clenched his fist against the prickling sensation in his hand. He was fine. Everything was fine.

~

        Ral jerked to wakefulness, heart racing, clutching for his wand. There was a green flash still burned into the backs of his eyelids, and he had to stuff his face into the pillow to keep from crying out. _Just a dream_ , he told himself, but he was pretty sure that wasn’t going to be enough.

        It was rare for Ral to be the one to seek out Jace at night, but it was also fairly rare for Jace not to have already slipped into bed with him. It was weird and probably fucked up, but by now it was their normal. They’d been sharing a bed on and off, most nights, since they were eleven, after all. In fact, there had been several times over the summer when he’d fallen asleep face down on his laptop with the skype call still open. If things had gotten a little weirder a few years ago when Ral started waking up with stiffies, well, he just hadn’t said anything about it. Besides, morning wood was just a normal part of puberty. Totally normal. So maybe he was a little gay. But he wasn’t in love with his best friend. Not even a little bit.

            He rolled out of bed. He wasn’t going to be able to fall asleep without making sure that Jace was all right. Of course, there was no reason he wouldn’t be. But Ral needed to see for himself. Jace wouldn’t mind if he showed up instead of the other way around; it had happened on occasion.

            The corridors were deathly still, though there were lights burning strongly at intermittent intervals. The nightlights had been put in place just before Ral’s second year, when the rules had been rewritten to better accommodate for the insomnia and nightmares that so many of the recent students suffered from. As Ral headed upward, he passed Professor Granger hurrying down the corridor, and she gave him a slightly startled nod. She’d probably been expecting to see Jace. Ral hunched his shoulders against the worry and kept walking.

            He opened the door of the Hufflepuff dormitory silently and snuck in. The sudden pitch darkness caught at his throat, and he almost dropped his wand as he scrabbled to get it out and cast _Lumos_. Of course it was dark. Jace hadn’t brought Kallist back with him. And why hadn’t he done that? It was totally out of character. Jace loved Kallist; he took him everywhere. He tried to feed him, for god’s sake, and Kallist was a _cloud_.

            At least Ral knew exactly where Jace’s bed was. Third down from the door. Taking care not to trip over anyone else, he headed for it, and pulled back the curtain—only to feel as if he’d been punched in the gut. Jace was asleep, looking almost naked without his cloak, and his new girlfriend was curled up at his side, the hood of Jace’s cloak drawn up over her head. She looked up, startled, then put a finger to her lips and gestured to Jace.

            Letting the curtain fall, Ral backed away so fast he dropped his wand, and the light winked out as it dropped to the floor. His hand burst with pain so suddenly and sharply that he bent over with an anguished yelp, and then something white-hot and blazing snapped from the end of his hand toward the ground. The flash of lightning illuminated his wand for an instant before everything went dark again.

            Ral’s hand was still hot and stinging, and he swallowed against the rising pain in his throat. Of course Jace was sleeping in the same bed as Emmara—he was probably sleeping _with_ her, too. Angrily, Ral pressed the backs of both hands into his eyes until kaleidoscopic brown images wavered in front of them. Time to go back to bed. Jace was fine. Obviously. _Ral_ might not be fine, but who cared? Definitely not Jace.

~

            Elspeth cracked her neck from side to side as she headed down the corridor. It was early in the morning, the sun barely peeking over the horizon. She liked the stillness of this time of day, the clear, new quality of the light, especially during the spring and fall. She paused for a moment at a window, running her finger along the sill and smiling out at the light swelling over the trees.

            First stop: the owlery. Although it could get quite cold in the little room at times, today it was already warming up, the stones catching the early morning sunlight as Elspeth entered and looked around with a smile. She could use a proper morning flight soon, but she’d already promised herself she was going to go running first before she started practicing her Quidditch moves.

            Achilles swooped down from near the top of the owlery, landing on her shoulder and nibbling at her ear. “Good morning.” Elspeth sighed a little, as she undid the letter from beneath his wings. “Ral was in a terrible mood yesterday, and Jace was a little—preoccupied. I think it’s going to be an annoying term,” she told the owl, as she opened the envelope. The little niggling worry in the pit of her stomach was crowded out when, in addition to the usual letter scribbled in cramped but neat handwriting, a photograph dropped into her hand.

            “I know you’ve been asking,” her friend had written on the back, “and I hate how I look, but here you go.” The girl in the photograph was staring intently at the camera, but she gave a tiny smile when Elspeth looked down at her, and Elspeth found herself grinning back, even though her pen pal couldn’t see her. Though she knew her friend was only a year younger than she was, she was tiny. Even drawn up to as much of her full height as possible, she was clearly well under five feet, judging from the furniture in the background. She wore simple, dark robes with gold trim, and a funny jeweled headdress that came to a point in the center of her forehead.

            Elspeth’s stomach and heart flipflopped. She was small, but she was very elegant and very pretty. Elspeth thought she was probably wearing makeup, expertly applied. She sighed. She, herself, rarely bothered, and she certainly never did her hair up in anything fancier than a bun, usually just a straight plait. Well, never mind. No point wanting to be somebody she wasn’t. It wasn’t as if she was going to lose her friend for being a bit plain.

            She stuffed the letter into her pocket. “Sorry, Achilles, I don’t have a letter to send back yet, it’s been rather crazy around here,” she told the owl, which made a forgiving noise and fluttered back up into one of the higher alcoves. Elspeth turned and headed downstairs, the letter and photograph making a small, comfortable bulge inside her large pocket.

            Limbering herself up in front of her usual side entrance, she straightened up when someone called her name. Ral looked pretty awful as he slouched into the hallway, dressed in Muggle running shorts and a grubby t-shirt with _ANARCHY_ scrawled across it in clumsy letters. There was a large hole in it just over his belly button, the edges of which had the particular stained, singed look that Elspeth had learned to recognize as generally being caused by chemical burns.

            They sometimes did run together, but she wouldn’t have expected him to be up for it the first day of term. She’d sort of expected him to want to spend more time with Jace, for one thing, although maybe Jace’s new girlfriend was posing a problem in that regard. Elspeth chewed on her lip. “Are you feeling all right?” she asked hesitantly. Ral gave her a glare out of eyes marked by deep, dark circles.

            “Of course,” he snapped. “I just felt like exercising. Can’t someone feel like exercising without getting the third degree?”

            Elspeth’s eyebrows went up. “Okay,” she agreed. “Let’s go, then.” She didn’t feel like having a conversation with him when he was in a mood this bad. Not even when she was flying high on the elation of getting a photo from her pen pal.

            Ral took off running at about twice the pace that Elspeth would have chosen, and she considered letting him wear out by himself, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to leave him alone right now, so she sighed and resigned herself to having a brief but intense workout. They sprinted around the side of the school, over a little stone bridge and into one of the larger gardens that the students sometimes tended for Herbology.

            It was a large, round garden with a pebbly pathway that skirted the exterior, making it ideal for running laps. Ral started flagging as they hit the stones, and by the time they were halfway around the first circuit, he was panting and waving his arm to stop. Elspeth, despite being in better shape, was only too happy to catch her breath. “That was dumb,” she said severely to him, as Ral doubled over his knees, gasping, and then threw up onto one of the rows of multicolored flowers at the edge of the path.

            Despite being irritated, she went over to pat him on the back, but he waved her off. “I think Jace is under a spell,” he said, when he’d finished emptying his breakfast onto the castle lawn.

            Elspeth tapped her foot. “Is this because he has a girlfriend?” she asked. “I know this might seem odd to you, Ral, but people our age do sometimes fancy one another.”

            “No!” Ral protested, then sighed, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. “Yes. Kind of. She was sleeping in his bed last night!”

            “You do that all the time.”

            “Yes, _exactly_. He didn’t even fucking ask me, Elspeth!”

            “People do dumb things when they’re, well, you know. Jace is your friend, he’s not your possession.”

            Ral glared at her. “What the fuck, Elspeth?” he demanded. “You think this is just because I’m jealous, don’t you?”

            She crossed her arms at him. “I think that’s very likely, yes. And I know it feels bad, but you need to—”

            Ral shook his head and cut her off. “No, I don’t need to do anything. There’s something wrong with him, Elspeth. He gave Emmara his cloak, she was wearing his cloak in bed, and he wasn’t. He never takes that thing off.”

            “He probably wanted to do something stupid and romantic,” Elspeth pointed out, and Ral made an angry, incoherent noise. “Ral…”

            “ _Fuck_!” Ral exploded, and this time there was a note of pleading confusion in his voice that made her want to hug him, but he took a step back as she took a step forward, one hand suddenly hidden behind his back. “Just—leave me alone,” he snapped, waving a hand at her. “You don’t get it. You just—”

            She watched him jog unsteadily off deeper into the garden, sighed, and went back to her normal route. It was going to be frustratingly difficult to help him with this one. Jace might not be under a spell, but he was being annoyingly thoughtless.

~

            Ral was not crying. If there were tears in his eyes, it was because the wind had picked up. He left the path and started pushing his way through row after row of vegetables. After he’d been running for several minutes, he felt a sharp pain in one leg, and suddenly he was falling. The breath he’d sucked in to gasp out an obscenity was knocked right back out of his lungs, and he looked down to see several of the plants he’d been stepping in twining angrily up his leg.

            Oh, shit. Ral reached for his wand, but it was tangled in his shirt, and he couldn’t get it out. Bright spots of blood appeared on his bare legs and he grunted in pain as the thorny vines tightened. His hand was heating up, just as it had a few minutes ago, and he still couldn’t reach his wand inside the constricting folds of cloth.

            The plants started to pull him backward, and Ral panicked, thrashing wildly. There was a loud noise, and he shouted as pain shot through his hand. A hissing noise came from the plants around him, and he felt spines digging into his waist and arms. He whimpered, trying to shield his face with his arms.

            “ _Exaresco!_ ” A sudden blast of hot air slid over his shoulders and arms, and the constricting pain eased. He felt the vines go limp and begin to drop off. “Are you all right?” a new voice asked.

            He lay and tried to take stock. His limbs were intact, and his stomach wasn’t hurting anymore than it had been to begin with. “Yeah, I think so,” he grunted.

            “ _Smilax_ _sernetai_ can be quite dangerous,” the voice said, as a pair of hands helped Ral as he got slowly to his feet. “I’m afraid there’s rather an infestation of them in the school gardens. I’m not sure why the gardeners let them get so out of hand this summer, but I will make sure to have words with them. Oh, dear, you’re all scratched up. Hold still.”

            Awkardly, Ral stood still, staring at his rescuer. A few inches shorter than he was, the compact woman of indeterminate age was wearing what looked like Muggle jeans and a heavy leather jacket that seemed at odds with her loosely tied back ash blond hair. “ _Episkey_ ,” she said, waving her wand. Ral felt the stinging pain in his stomach and legs slowly ease as the healing spell took effect. “There. Is that better?”

            He had to swallow several times before he was capable of nodding. “Yeah,” he got out roughly. “Thanks.”

            The woman blinked large, pale blue eyes at him, and then broke into a sudden smile. “I’m Luna, by the way,” she said.

            “Ral,” he answered automatically, putting out a hand for her to shake, wondering who she was. The name didn’t give him much, and he couldn’t even tell if she was the right age to be a student or a professor.

            “I’m so happy to meet you,” Luna said, sounding oddly sincere. “Do be careful around here if you’re going to keep exercising.”

            “I guess I should get back,” Ral mumbled. He was already worn out, and he didn’t want to throw up again. “I should eat something before class,” he added vaguely.

            “I’m sure I’ll see you again soon,” Luna said, as he started to trudge back in the direction of the castle.

            As he headed down the corridor toward the dining hall, he heard giggling, and he swung around to see Emmara and Jace, looking disheveled, stumbling into the corridor from behind one of the tapestries. There was a little hidden alcove behind that tapestry, Ral knew, and suddenly, the pain that had been hovering in the vicinity of his stomach reached up and clutched his throat. He turned around quickly, ignoring Jace’s voice calling a greeting, and headed for the stairs. He was running by the time he reached the entrance to the Slytherin dungeon, and then he didn’t actually go in. Instead, he sank down in front of the tapestry, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes.

            Oh, fuck it. He didn’t think he cared enough to go to class today. Jace wasn’t Jace anymore, and no one was going to believe him. The worst part, Ral thought miserably, was what if they were right? What if Jace just—didn’t care about him anymore? No, Ral shook his head. Jace hadn’t brought Kallist back with him. That wasn’t like him. Something was definitely wrong.

            Something _had_ to be wrong.


	4. Standing Stones

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Harry worries, Jace is a brat, and Hermione introduces Luna to a book.

            “Ready for a new year?” Harry asked Hermione, who looked up and smiled at him. They were unpacking a set of used books that a student who had graduated several years ago had sent over for the still relatively new Somnarium. After the year during which the first-years had formed their Sleep Club, Draco Malfoy had spearheaded an effort to create a large common room for all houses, where the students or professors could go if they had insomnia or nightmares. It had started as nothing more than a large room filled with beds and a carefully-tuned cauldron of Drowsiness Potion, and it had grown slowly over the past five years. Now, the walls had been enchanted with a spell that allowed any occupant to call up a desired scene, most of which were nature-based (Ral Zarek called it “screensaver mode”, much to Harry and Hermione’s amusement and Draco’s bewilderment), and there were couches and large pillows in addition to beds.

            They had recently begun fleshing out the library with donations from students and former students of books that people thought made soothing bedtime stories, and there was another new room being constructed that Hermione hoped to open soon, where she, Ral, and a few other of the Muggle-born students had been trying to figure out a way to even out the magical energies enough to allow a computer with internet access to be installed.

            Hermione sat back on her heels and brushed her hair out of her face. “Getting there,” she said. “Last year was a bit uneventful, though. I keep finding myself wondering if that’s a good sign, or if something is going to happen again.”

            “Let’s go with good sign,” Harry replied, though he was honestly a little surprised that the previous year had been as uneventful as it had. They had a number of trouble-makers at the school right now, especially Jace Beleren and Ral Zarek. Maybe the fact that the two had been studying for their O.W.L.s had helped keep them out of the trouble they had managed to find themselves in every previous year.

            Harry mentally went down the list: first year, nearly getting themselves killed by a boggart, though that hadn’t been entirely their fault; second year, finding a hidden passage that had been disenchanted during the Wizarding War and using it to play hide-and-seek in until they woke up a very angry dragon; third year, forcing the school to be evacuated when their attempts to make a Bottled Dreams potion went very, very poorly; and fourth year, managing to get lost in Venice during the school trip and accidentally destroy a coven of vampires that had been terrorizing one of the smaller wizarding schools in the nation. These were, of course, all in addition to the sundry minor pranks and moments of really astonishing stupidity that had cropped up over the years.

            Fifth year, though, not only had they both been studying for O.W.L.s, but Hermione had had the frankly brilliant idea of giving both of them individual research projects to work on—she had already been giving Ral private lessons for years, and it was mostly a matter of formalizing things and getting the resources for them. Several other students had also benefited from what turned into a new, individual projected-oriented class, but Harry definitely thought that the greatest benefit had been confining most of Ral’s and Jace’s overwhelming mental energy to a specific problem.

            He glanced up at the clock to check the time. “I’d better get going, I’m supposed to meet Jace in five minutes,” he said to Hermione. “We have a legilimency lesson.” Despite Jace’s unrivaled power as a legilimens, he still needed a teacher, and it had fallen to Harry, as the teacher with the most experience dealing with legilimency. Jace’s talent was one of the things that Harry sometimes still found a little disconcerting. He knew what it was like to have a lot of power and not much control, but Jace was a very different person from Harry in many ways. No matter how much he tried, he thought he’d never really been able to mend his interactions with the boy since his first year. Jace was always polite but guarded around him, and, even if Harry had no one but himself to blame, it still stung. At least he and Draco seemed to get on well.

            Hermione waved him off, and he headed out the door to his office, which he reached a minute or two late, and was getting ready to apologize when he realized Jace wasn’t there yet, either. Harry ran a puzzled hand through his hair as he unlocked his office. Jace might be something of a troublemaker—a status that was probably exacerbated by his association with Ral Zarek—but he was also generally an overly conscientious, punctual student. It wasn’t like him to be late.

            When he heard a knock on his door ten minutes after the lesson was supposed to start, his mild concern vanished to be replaced with irritation, but he called out, “Come in!” as calmly as he could.

            Jace breezed in the door with the hood of his cloak pushed back, his hair ruffled, and his robes askew. He was breathing hard, his cheeks flushed bright red. “Sorry I’m late, Professor,” he said, not sounding sorry at all.

            “Hm,” Harry said, noncommittally. “Please don’t be late again, Mr. Beleren. In the meantime, let’s review what you were working on over the summer.”

            At the end of his fifth year, Jace’s mental defenses had been strong, but clumsy. Harry was no longer able to brute force his way in, even using all his power and the methods he knew to increase his power. Jace had, however, still been susceptible to subtle assaults; he couldn’t always tell when something was his own thought or someone else’s, and that made it relatively easy to slide in through the cracks. His mental exercises over the summer had been tailored to work on that weakness. Harry intended to see how much progress he’d made.

            “ _Legilimens_ ,” Harry said. Though he was capable of performing it wandlessly, he preferred to signal to Jace that the lesson was about to begin. He needed Jace to feel that he could trust him.

            As was typical lately, Jace’s mind felt like a smooth, blank wall beneath Harry’s mental fingers. He felt carefully along it, feeling for the soft chinks, the little holes that the boy hadn’t learned to close up at the end of his fifth year, and found one almost immediately. It was surprisingly large, actually, Harry thought he’d been getting better at closing up this kind of vulnerability. Nevertheless, he slipped inside—and was immediately assaulted with sensory input.

            Hands on his shoulders, sliding down his waist, a pair of lips on his own. He heard his own voice loud in his ears, and for a moment, he didn’t realize that it _wasn’t_ his. Harry pulled back right away, feeling his ears flush with embarrassment as he realized both why Jace had been late and what kind of memory he had stumbled into accidentally.

            He sat still for a minute to recover himself, trying to make the twin awkward feelings of arousal and serious discomfort go down. That had _not_ been something he’d wanted to see or think about, much less experience. He would have to be more careful in future, especially if Jace was likely to be having any more snogging sessions. Harry supposed he was sixteen, after all, so it probably shouldn’t be all that surprising.

            “Professor? Is something wrong?” Jace’s voice sounded almost smug, and Harry looked up sharply. There was a faint smile hovering at the corner of his student’s lips, almost a smirk, and he suddenly realized that the effect of accidentally—as he’d thought—invading the boy’s privacy had been to cause him to reflexively pull back entirely.

            “Did you do that on purpose, Jace?” he asked.

            “Well,” Jace grinned, looking very pleased with himself, “you said at the end of last semester that I needed to stop letting people trick their way into my head.”

            “Did it occur to you that—” Harry paused, trying to choose his words carefully. “ _Don’t_ do that again,” he said. “I want to make this very clear. That was seriously inappropriate.”

            “I figured it would work,” Jace shrugged. “It would keep most people out. Or distract them, I guess.” He smirked again.

            “If I catch you deliberately showing me memories like that again, you will have detention for a week,” Harry said. “The idea is good, I can’t fault that, but if you’re going to be practicing with me, you need to come up with something else.”

            “Sorry,” Jace said, sounding slightly chastened, but still more pleased with himself than Harry would have liked. He sighed mentally. Horny teenagers were almost impossible to deal with, and Jace really was very talented, which made the whole situation worse. Time to have a long discussion with Draco again. Somehow, he always ended up feeling better after talking to his friend, even when it didn’t manage to resolve anything. And, of course, Draco had a much better handle on how to interact with Jace. Harry grimaced slightly. It was going to be a long year.

~

            Hermione sighed with satisfaction as she sank into one of the Hogwarts library chairs. In the hustle and bustle of the beginning of term, it had been almost a week since she’d had a chance to sit down and just relax with a good book. So far, the year was going reasonably smoothly, although, she thought cynically, that it probably wasn’t going to last. She had also drafted three different letters to Ron, all of which she had set on fire after penning one or two sentences. She kept wanting to ask Harry for help, but she didn’t really know how to explain her feelings in a way that wouldn’t make him think she wanted to get back together with Ron—and she certainly did not want that.

            A sudden shriek dragged her out of her thoughts. Somebody unauthorized was trying to take one of the books out of the Restricted Section. Of course, Hermione thought, as she put her book down and hurried off toward it at a half-jog. She couldn’t even get five minutes of peace around here.

            She rounded the corner to find, to her surprise, a somewhat flustered-looking Luna Lovegood shouting at a book. The book was screaming back, and it was louder than Luna, so Hermione had no idea what her friend was saying. She whipped her wand out and shouted, “ _Silencio liber_!”

            The book went quiet immediately, and somewhat apologetically flipped itself closed.

            “—you stupid volume! Oh.” Luna turned to Hermione and gave her a smile. “Thank you. It seems the books don’t recognize me yet.”

            “I expect someone forgot to cast the proper spell on you at the beginning of term,” Hermione said apologetically. “Actually, I’m not sure who was supposed to do it. It’s been a while since we’ve had a new addition to the faculty.”

            “It’s fine,” Luna said vaguely. “I was afraid the books didn’t like me, but if we simply need to be properly introduced, that’s no trouble.” She smiled at Hermione, who smiled back, not quite sure if she ought to laugh or not. She couldn’t always tell when Luna was joking.

            “Right,” she said, after a moment of awkward silence. “Well, I can do that for you now, if you’d like.”

            “Yes, please.” Luna nodded, and Hermione raised her wand.

            The incantation was a little more complex than she might normally have volunteered to do without preparation, especially since she hadn’t performed it herself since Harry began working at Hogwarts five years ago. But something about Luna’s calm gaze made her want to try. Luna wanted to meet the books, and she clearly fully believed in Hermione’s ability to make that happen.

            So Hermione took Luna’s hand gently, traced the complicated sigil on the back of it with her wand, and murmured in Latin, “ _By the power vested in me as Professor of Hogwarts, I bestow the rights of ownership upon Luna Lovegood._ There,” she finished, as she felt the soft hum of acceptance from the library around her. “You should be recognized now.”

            Luna blinked at her, and her lips twitched just slightly further upward. “But you haven’t introduced me yet,” she said. Hermione stared at her, unable to tell if she was serious or joking.

            “Well—er—” she replied after a moment. “All right.” She squinted at the book. “Um, _Darkest Myths of Ancient Britain_ , this is Luna, er, Lovegood. Luna, this is… _Darkest Myths of Ancient Britain_?”

            “Pleased to meet you.” Luna stroked a gentle hand across the front cover and opened the book. Hermione found herself oddly captivated with the movement of her friend’s hands, and she had to shake her head and look away. “I’m afraid, though, that you aren’t the book I was looking for.”

            Shaking her head slightly, she slid it carefully back on the shelf.

            “What book are you looking for?” Hermione asked.

            “I’m…not entirely sure.” Luna shuffled her feet and stared pensively to one side. “It was quite a large book, I remember that. I think there was golden script along the spine, and it was bound in either black or very dark blue leather. And for some reason, it makes me think of boats…”

            “How can you not be sure?” Hermione asked practically. “Why were you looking for it, then?”

            “It was a book we used for the DA, a long time ago. And when I saw the stones, I thought perhaps they were the stones it had mentioned.”

            “Stones?”

            “They were broken, and it felt—” Luna cut herself off abruptly, shivering. “Sorry,” she said. “I don’t think I’m telling this story the right way round.”

            “Are you all right?” Hermione asked. Her friend was pale and shivering, and when Hermione looked closer, she saw that Luna had marked circles beneath her large eyes. Her forehead was damp. “Do you have a fever?” She automatically reached out to feel Luna’s forehead, but the other woman ducked backwards with a small smile.

            “Oh! No, I’m all right,” Luna replied. “I’ve just been feeling a bit under the weather.”

            “Why don’t you come back to my study and tell the story the right way round, then? I could make you some herbal tea.”

            Luna smiled suddenly, rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet. “I’d like that,” she said.

            The tea seemed to help with the shivering, at any rate, though Luna still looked pale and quite thin with her long fingers clasped around Hermione’s favorite china mug. Luna chewed on the corner of her mouth a little before she started to talk again. “I don’t know how much you know about what I’ve been doing,” she started, eventually.

            “You were doing a lot of traveling, I know that.” Hermione poured herself a cup of tea as well. “I couldn’t figure out where to send letters to you. I actually feel pretty bad about that.”

            “Oh.” Luna traced a finger around the rim of her cup. “I—didn’t realize you wanted to send me letters. I’m sorry.”

            Frowning, Hermione took a sip of her tea. It was too hot, and she hissed in pain as she burned her tongue. “You’re a really good friend,” she said fiercely. “Of course I want to know what’s going on with you. I want—” She wasn’t sure if she could explain everything she wanted. A small voice at the back of her mind piped up, _Are you sure you know what you want?_

            Luna nodded. “I did do a lot of traveling. I ended up in some pretty strange places—I have some photos I can show you later. But there was one place…well, I thought I might be on the trail of the Crumple-horned Snorkack finally, and I accidentally stumbled on a place in the northern part of Wales. It was—” she shivered again, pressing her hands more tightly around the teacup. “It was very dark. You could tell. There had been something buried in the earth there—there were still the remnants of a powerful spell and a befuddlement charm of some kind, which I imagine is why it had been undisturbed for so long. And I tried telling the Ministry about it, but they didn’t really seem to want to know. I guess they didn’t want to have something else to deal with so soon after the war.”

            Hermione nodded, quashing a sudden instinct to reach out and take Luna’s hand. “What about the book?” she prompted.

            “Oh, yes.” Luna smiled dreamily and sighed. “I got lost out there. It was a bit frightening, really. Some kind of charm I’d never dealt with kept making me come back to the open casket.”

            “Casket?” Hermione echoed.

            Luna nodded. “Oh, yes, there were bits and pieces of stone, and I’m fairly sure that’s what it was. _Do not awaken_ , said one of the bits.”

            Despite herself, despite the coziness of the firelit study, Hermione found herself shivering as well. It was a horribly eerie story.

            “It made me think of a book I’d read, quite a long time ago. There were pictures in it of a casket in a fairy ring that said something in Welsh on it. The trouble is, I can’t remember what the book was called. I just know it was here. So, well, I’m afraid that’s one of the two major reasons I decided to come back and help out at Hogwarts.”  
            “What was the other reason? You really missed the delicious Hogwarts food?” Hermione tried to joke, but it fell a little flat when Luna put her head on one side with a considering look.

            “I don’t think I’ll tell you the other reason _just_ yet,” she said, with a small smile. “Maybe later.”

            “Well,” Hermione said, trying to reign in her curiosity, “anyways, that does sound serious. Can I help you look? In between classes and preparation time and research, I mean.”

            “Yes, please,” Luna smiled. “It—it _might_ be nothing. I hope it is.”

            The chilly atmosphere that had been growing in the room seemed to subside, and this time, Hermione couldn’t quite stop herself from reaching out and brushing her fingers across the back of Luna’s hand.


	5. Elemental Resonance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Ral is upset, Elspeth grapples with her sexuality, and Chandra is a shipper-on-deck.

            The work-table was covered in bits and pieces. Ral stared at them a little sullenly. Somewhere inside his head was a picture of what they should look like when they were put together, but right now it seemed fuzzy and indistinct. His brain didn’t seem to want to work properly anymore, and finally he put his forehead down on the table with a clunk. “God _dam_ mit.”

            “Are you having difficulty, Mr. Zarek?”

            Professor Granger looked up from the potion she had been bending over, and Ral almost wished he hadn’t bothered coming to his independent study today. He’d have gotten in trouble, but it might have been easier to deal with.

            “No,” he gritted out. Then he reached out a finger and poked at one of the bits. They were supposed to be coming together into a vaguely glove-like shape, but they just looked like little twists of metal and wood. Ral tried to recapture the desire he’d had when he’d pitched this independent study, the idea of a magical battery that would siphon energy and transmute it into electricity—basically a kind of magical transformer. The idea still tugged at him, but the feeling was muted and indistinct. All he seemed to be able to think about properly was the look on Jace’s face as he gazed at Emmara, like she was the most precious thing he’d ever seen in his life. And thinking about that hurt.

            Ral’s stomach felt pinched and sore, and his right hand was heating up again. A tiny spark skipped from one finger over to a coil of wire on the table, and he froze. This was the _last_ thing he needed, this stupid fucking— _lightning_. _Stop it_ , Ral told himself, but the heat in his hand intensified as he focused on it.

            “Mr. Zarek?” Professor Granger said again.

            “I’m fine, leave me alone,” Ral managed, but he knew he sounded more scared than angry at this point. There was a scraping noise as Professor Granger pushed back her chair and stood up. “I’m fine,” he said again, and at least the heat in his hand seemed to lessen, but he didn’t have long to be grateful for that before two tears squeezed their way out of his eyes and fell on the work-table.

            “Is this something that I can help with?” Professor Granger asked gently, and Ral felt one wild moment of surging hope.

            “It’s Jace,” he stammered out. “There’s—something wrong, I think. He’s been acting weird since the beginning of the year.”

            “Weird how?”

            “He and Emmara—” Ral swallowed, swiped the back of his hand across his eyes, and managed to look up at Professor Granger. That was a mistake. He could see the moment that her brow furrowed between her eyes, and he knew what she was going to say. He knew she was going to say he was jealous, just like everybody else. “I’m not jealous!” he snarled. Heat in his hand, surging up his spine. “It’s not that—I’m not even that _gay_!” Oh, fuck. He hadn’t meant to say that. “He’s under a spell, he didn’t bring Kallist back with him, he…”

            Even as he said it, he knew how she was going to respond. Just like everyone else, and the heat surged sudden and white and blazing, from the top of his head down the side of his arm. There was a bang that he was intimately familiar with, but it usually accompanied a purposeful spell, and lightning bolted out from the end of his hand, crackling across the face of the lab table and jumping erratically from object to object.             Ral took a deep, shuddering breath. His arm was aching, a sudden, bone-deep ache that met the pinching feeling in his stomach with an unpleasant twist. Was there actually something wrong with him? Was this what Jace had felt like in first-year? “I’ve gotta go,” he blurted, shoving himself back from the lab table as if it was a hot stove.

            “Mr. Zarek—”

            “I know, detention, sorry,” Ral said as he reached the door. “I won’t do it again. I’ll make up today’s work later. I can’t focus.”

            If Professor Granger was drawing breath to say something else, he wasn’t going to wait around to hear it. Ears burning, he pelted out of the study, and it wasn’t until he was halfway down the stairs that he realized he didn’t really have anywhere to go. He sat down on the middle step and put his head in his hands.

            After a few minutes, he heard quiet footsteps behind him. “I’m not going to give you detention,” Professor Granger said. “But I am worried about you, Ral. Quite honestly, you’ve always had trouble controlling your temper, and I don’t want to see that get worse.”

            “Yeah,” Ral muttered. “Sorry. Just a bad day.”

            “Do you want to actually talk about it?” He raised and lowered one shoulder. Professor Granger sighed. “I know you know that kind of behavior is unacceptable.”

            _But I didn’t mean to_ , Ral wanted to protest. He swallowed it, because it was a stupid, useless kind of thing to say. Instead, he just made a soft, assenting noise.

            “Why don’t you go back to your dorm for the time being?” Professor Granger suggested. “We can talk about it when you’re feeling better.”

            _How about never?_ Oh, god, he’d basically outed himself to a teacher in the Wizarding World. Ral knew his parents wouldn’t give a fuck if he was gay, but the Muggle world was a lot more accepting about certain things, as far as he could tell. What if he got expelled for being gay? What if— _shut up_ , he told his brain fiercely. He’d been babbling. She probably hadn’t even heard him. Besides, what was important was that Jace was under a fucking _spell_ , and no one was going to believe him, because they all thought he was fucking _jealous_.

            “Sure,” he said, taking a deep breath. “Yeah. I’ll go lie down. Maybe I caught the bug that’s going around the girls’ dorm.”

            “Maybe,” Professor Granger said. “Well, Ral, I’ll see you later.”

            “See you.” His arm was still aching.

~

            Chandra flung herself down onto Elspeth’s bed with a yawn. “I’m so tired,” she announced. “I just want to sleep for a week.”

            Elspeth patted her arm. “You’ll have to wait for the holidays like everybody else.”

            “It’s this stupid bug,” Chandra complained. “And of course I’m the only Gryffindor to have come down with it so far.”

            “So is Gideon expected to catch it soon then?” Tamiyo put in archly from across the room. Everyone knew he fancied Chandra, but no one was quite sure if Chandra reciprocated or not.

            Chandra glared across the room, grabbed Elspeth’s pillow, and flung it angrily. Her aim was off, and it bounced gently against Emmara’s head. The French girl looked up with a gasp from the book she had been reading, then laughed.

            “Sorry!” Chandra called. “Wasn’t aiming for you.”

            Sitting up, Emmara sent the pillow whizzing back across the room, almost knocking Chandra off the bed. “Got you back anyway,” she said with a grin. Elspeth still didn’t really know what to think of her. She tended to be rather quiet and private—and she spent a lot of time with Jace.

            Elspeth was trying very hard to judge Emmara for her own qualities and not fall into the trap of disliking her because she took Jace’s time away from Elspeth and Ral. It wouldn’t be fair to Emmara if both of them gave her the cold shoulder, and it was obvious that Ral wasn’t going to be objective. Elspeth was sympathetic, she was just also—tired. She wished she could talk to Jace or Ral about this, but Ral was definitely not going to be much use right now.

            “Say, Emmara,” Chandra said lazily. “What was it like, being Sorted as a sixth year?”

            Emmara shrugged. “Probably the same as it would have been as a first-year, I suppose.”

            “Couldn’t you have asked them to Sort you not at the ceremony?” Nissa put in. “It must have felt very odd, being the only one who wasn’t a child.”

            “I suppose.” Emmara leaned back over a sheet of paper that was probably her homework. “I didn’t think it was necessary to bother.” She paused, tilting her head to one side. “It was quite fun.”

            “Did they have anything like it at your old school?” Elspeth asked, trying to get herself interested in the conversation. She probably ought to be doing her homework, but she felt almost as tired as Chandra looked.

            “Not really.” Emmara looked up again, favoring Elspeth with a tight, slightly nervous smile. “You’re one of Jace’s friends, aren’t you, Elspeth? I mean, one of his close friends?”

            Was she jealous? Elspeth nodded. “Yeah,” she said awkwardly. “We’ve known each other for a while.”

            “I only met him a few months ago, but I like him so much.” Elspeth wasn’t sure what her tone of voice signified. Something about the way she spoke seemed a little unusual, but it was probably the accent. Maybe just the fact that English presumably wasn’t her first language. “I just wondered if you have any advice.”

            “Advice?” Elspeth echoed in confusion.

            “Things he likes for presents, that sort of thing…”

            Chandra snorted something into Elspeth’s pillow. “What did you say?” Emmara asked, and Chandra looked up with a shrug.

            “I said, I still can’t believe he’s straight.”

            Emmara’s eyebrows went up, and Elspeth shifted uncomfortably. This was not a conversation she wanted to be having right now. Or ever, preferably. Emmara shrugged and didn’t seem as if she was going to answer, which meant Elspeth was at least off the hook for now. Then Chandra spoke again, “So, are you positive, Emmara?”

            “Positive of what?”

            “Chandra,” Elspeth said, “shut up.”

            “That’s he’s straight.”

            “I don’t think that is any of your business,” Emmara said mildly, turning back to her book. “If I am happy, and he is happy, that is all that matters, no?”

            “No,” Chandra said loudly, and Elspeth put a hand on her shoulder.

            “Don’t,” she said, quietly. “Emmara hasn’t done anything.”

            “Well, _Jace_ has!” snapped Chandra. “He went and broke Ral’s heart, and you know it!”

            The room went suddenly quiet, and Elspeth tried to figure out what the right thing to say was. Finally, she settled for, “They weren’t dating, you know.”           

            Chandra gave her a look. “They weren’t dating _anyone_ ,” she said pointedly. “You know they were going to be a thing. Everybody knew they were going to be a thing.”

            On the other bed, Emmara shrugged. “Jace didn’t seem to think so,” she said. “If Ral never said anything, that’s his loss.”

            As Chandra started to get up, Elspeth put a hand on her arm. “Come on, Chandra,” she said. “We’re all worried about Ral, but Emmara’s right. And it’s definitely not _her_ fault. Ral will—” she swallowed, thinking about his face the last time she’d seen it, “—he’ll be fine after a little while.”

            Chandra flung herself back down on the bed with a wordless noise and muttered something into the pillow, but Elspeth decided not to probe what it was. Her friend could be very rude when she wanted to be. She sighed. It was definitely not going to be an easy semester, and she was so tired she didn’t even want to look at her homework yet.

~

            Jace was worried about Ral. For some reason, ever since the encounter in the bathroom at the Hogwarts Express, he’d barely seen him. Ral seemed to be slipping in late to class and then was always the first one out, so he never managed to catch him then. And, Jace thought a little guiltily, he had been sharing his bed with Emmara at night, and he hadn’t been able to explain himself to Ral.

            Not that he needed to, of course. They didn’t have an _agreement_ or anything, but it was just that it was something they had done a lot up until this year, and maybe it was kind of a dick move to stop doing it without even letting Ral know about it. But, Jace thought, when would he have had the chance, anyway? He sighed.

            “Are you all right, Jace?” Emmara asked from beside him, and he nodded.

            “Yeah, I’m fine.”

            “You seem distracted.”

            “Mmm, I guess I am, a little.” Shaking his head, he tried to focus on the Quidditch game, instead. It was Elspeth’s first year as captain, so it was very important that he cheer her on. Of course, the fact that this was a Hufflepuff versus Slytherin match just made everything more awkward.

            In the air above them, Elspeth executed a flawless turn, snatched the Quaffle out of a surprised Chaser's hands—a fifth-year Slytherin named Vraska—and sent it spinning through the goal hoops. Jace got to his feet, cheering so hard that he actually started to cough.

            “Here, have a drink,” Emmara said, her voice amused, as she pushed the flask she always carried into his hands.

            “Thanks,” Jace said. The water was especially sweet on his tongue today, and he sighed as he sat back down, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and passing it back to her. She was so beautiful that he had to pause for a minute, feeling somewhat small and grubby beside her pale-skinned loveliness. “Um,” he said. “Can I kiss you?”

            Emmara smiled sweetly. “Of course.” She fluffed her ash-blond hair and leaned forward.

~

            “Ugh!” Hermione flung herself down into the squashiest armchair in the teachers’ lounge. She must be in an especially bad mood, Draco mused, since she generally preferred to perch on the side of one of the harder chairs, certainly not sink down into the squashy chair as if she were trying to keep going through the floor.

            “Everything all right?” he asked her, putting down the book he had been reading.

            “The sixth-years are impossible, I’m worried about Luna, and I just got a letter from Ron, so no. Nothing is all right,” Hermione complained.

            “I suppose the last uneventful semester couldn’t last,” Draco said thoughtfully. “Is Mr. Zarek causing you trouble?”

            “Concern, really, to be fair,” Hermione answered. “He almost seems as if he’s losing control of his magic.”

            “More than usual, you mean?”

            “I don’t mean his tendency to fly off the handle. I mean he cast a lightning spell yesterday without his wand, and I don’t think he meant to.”

            “Hm,” Draco said. “Well, Mr. Zarek certainly does have a way with lightning. Are you sure he didn’t mean to?”

            “I’m not quite certain, no, but it did seem like it.” She sighed. “I suppose I can just keep an eye on him for now. He seems to be awfully worried about Jace as well.”

            “Jace is giving Harry a headache, but I think it’s just normal teenage hormones.” Draco shifted in his seat. “What’s this about Ron sending you a letter?”

            Flinging her arms over the leg of the chair, which was even more unusual for her, Hermione dug in the pocket of her robe and pulled out a piece of parchment. “Here,” she said stiffly, then cleared her throat. “ ‘Dear Hermione,’” she began, then wilted. “Oh, I can’t. It’s not—there’s nothing wrong with it, it’s a perfectly reasonable letter, I just don’t know how to talk to him!”

            “Well, I’m sure you’re aware he’s not my favorite person,” Draco drawled. He had never had any great love for the youngest Weasley boy, although he had tried to temper his initial dislike after the war. The incident between Hermione and Ron had not improved matters, however, and he had given up on trying after finding Hermione crying in an alcove one too many times.

            “Yes, and I think that’s completely reasonable.” Hermione briskly flicked a loose strand of hair out of her eyes. “I just…we _were_ such good friends. He knows he behaved—well—awfully. I want to forgive him. I just don’t know how. I don’t want him to think I have any desire whatsoever to get back together with him.”

            “Well, have you?” Draco drawled. She had oscillated quite a bit in the time after the breakup, muttering about ‘poor Ron’ and ‘such good times originally’, though, as far as he knew, the Weasley brat didn’t know about any of that.

            “No.” Hermione spoke with a level of firmness Draco had rarely heard her apply to this particular topic. “No, I very much do not.”

            Something about her voice made him look up. A faint pink tinged the top of her ears and splashed across her cheeks. “Is there someone else?” he asked, with a faintly predatory grin.

            “No—I mean—I don’t—” Hermione floundered helplessly. “That is, I—” She paused. “Oh dear,” she said, at last. “Er, well, I suppose there might be. But I don’t think that—” very long pause indeed, “—I don’t think that the person is likely to feel the same way about me, and I hadn’t even, well, really realized that until you asked just now.”

            Draco shrugged. “Well, you won’t know unless you ask,” he said pragmatically, but before he could try to probe any further, the door slammed open and Harry stalked in. Brows drawn down and his robes swirling around him, he almost seemed to draw the colors out of the rest of the room. Draco found himself having to take a deep breath, and then wondered where that had come from.

            “Good…evening, Harry?” Hermione ventured tentatively.

            “Merlin’s _fucking_ beard,” Harry said, starting toward the squashy armchair and pausing when he saw it was already occupied. Draco had to hide a smile. Apparently everyone’s response to a bad day was throwing themselves down into that particular armchair. He had to admit, he’d been guilty of it himself before.

            Thwarted, Harry shoved his hands in the pockets of his robes and began to pace. “The sixth-years are bloody impossible this year,” he groaned. “After last year, I really thought we were going to have a little peace with that crowd.”

            “What happened this time?” Draco asked mildly.

            “Ral skipped DADA this morning, and when I went to find him later, I caught him laying lightning traps around our new transfer student’s bed. How he got into the Hufflepuff girls’ dormitory, I don’t know.”

            “Oh, Merlin,” Hermione groaned. “What kind of traps?”

            “I don’t think they would have hurt her much,” Harry said, slowly. “Certainly, I think he just wanted to make her uncomfortable. But when I caught him, he tried to shock me as well.”

            Draco frowned. “Did he realize it was you?” he asked.

            “I don’t know.” Harry shrugged. “I think it was an automatic reaction, but it’s still—concerning. Without more control, he could seriously injure someone with a spell like that.”

            “What did you do?” Hermione asked, but before Harry could answer, the door opened yet again, and Luna Lovegood entered the room, twirling her hair absently with one hand.

            “I don’t think you should assume he was trying,” she said mildly. Draco, Harry, and Hermione paused and blinked at her in confusion. “Oh,” her mild-eyed stare slid around the room, pausing on the squashy armchair just as everyone else’s had, “I just overheard the last bit of the conversation. And I was just wondering if Ral might be an elementalist.”

            “A what?” Harry asked.

            “Well, they’re more common in Eastern Europe and Russia, I believe,” Luna said calmly. “Probably the school system in Britain is too rigid for them, or maybe there’s something about the heredity. But Ral’s family are immigrants, aren’t they?”

            “Yes,” Hermione supplied, sounding as confused as Draco.

            “Well, then.” Luna nodded to herself. “He’s probably got an affinity for lightning, I imagine. Elementalists sometimes have more trouble with control than more generalist wizards do.” She cocked her head to one side. “You might keep an eye on Chandra, as well. She does seem to set her plants on fire quite a lot, and she’s half Indian, you know. It’s also more common in India, I think, though I haven’t spent much time there.”

            “Merlin,” Draco groaned. “You mean half of the sixth years are _natively_ bad at controlling their magic?”

            “Actually it’s only about seven and a half percent.” Luna smiled, and Hermione choked out a surprised laugh. “I suppose that’s higher than the usual, though.”

            “I gave him a detention,” Harry said, with a sigh.

            “Why don’t I take it?” Luna suggestly brightly. “I’ll give him some books about elementalism to read. I’m sure he’d like that. He’s always got good questions. Very curious boy. I like him.”

            “Yeah, please,” Harry said. “Jace has been racking up detentions as well, and he shouldn’t be. He’s a sixth-year, they’re supposed to be a bit more responsible.”

            “You mean like we were?” Draco said, with a wicked grin. “Wasn’t sixth-year the year you were sneaking around with an ex-Death-Eater’s potion book?”

            “Shut up.” Harry’s voice was harsh, but he laughed. “All right, so maybe I’m expecting a little much, but Merlin’s beard. I’ve got so much sympathy for all our professors now.”

            Luna perched herself on the arm of the squashy armchair, a little hesitantly. “You don’t mind?” she asked Hermione, who stared for a moment, then shook her head.

            Draco glanced from one of them to the other. Hm. “Does anyone want to watch a movie?” he asked. “I think we’ve all had as much of the students as we can take, and since Mr. Zarek was kind enough to get a TV working for us, we might as well use it.”

            “Excuse me,” Hermione said. “I did most of the work on that.”

            Draco just grinned at her and winked, and she blew out her cheeks and huffed at him, but the expression turned into a smile.

~

            Elspeth gnawed on her lip and stared down at the parchment on her bed, clicking and unclicking the ball-point pen she’d brought back from summer at the Zareks’. It was so much more practical than a quill. For what had to be the umpteenth time, she looked up at the little photograph she had pinned over her bed. Her pen-pal gave her a small smile and a tiny wave, and her stomach turned over.

            Groaning, she ground her face into her pillow. When she’d been at Ral’s house, it hadn’t seemed so strange, but now that she was back at Hogwarts, it was very odd to be imagining kissing another girl. Especially now that she had actually seen a picture of said girl, because the image seemed to have got stuck in her head; she kept coming back to it at horribly inopportune times. It wasn’t _that_ odd, surely? Ral’s parents had even asked if she had a girlfriend or a boyfriend at one point. But before then, it hadn’t really occurred to her. She’d barely even realized that it was a _thing_.

            She sighed. She was never going to be able to write the next letter if she couldn’t settle her nerves a bit. Maybe if she went to talk to Chandra about it—Chandra’s family was split between Indian wizards and British Muggles, so she’d presumably have a different perspective, and, in any case, she was one of Elspeth’s closest friends. Elspeth might have gone to Ral or Jace first, but Ral was basically refusing to talk and also far too stressed, and she couldn’t seem to catch Jace at a time when his mouth wasn’t occupied with Emmara’s. Which really was getting to be a bit much, she thought. At least he could stop doing it where Ral could see him. He _had_ to know, didn’t he? Well, maybe not. Jace had never been very perceptive.

            Anyways, time to find Chandra. She got out of bed and sucked in a sudden, nauseated breath. Colored dots swirled in front of her eyes, and the next moment she was leaning against the wall, pain sparking through her hand where she’d fallen against it. She blinked a few times to clear her vision and shook her head. This stupid virus was really starting to cause problems. Maybe she should go to Madam Pomfrey, but the Quidditch match against Gryffindor was coming up in a few days, and that was the last important one for a while. If she could just make it a few more days, then she could go to the Hospital Wing guilt free.

            She waited another minute or two for her head to stop spinning, and then she set off for Gryffindor. Chandra was usually in the common room at this time of day if she wasn’t doing her homework with the rest of her friends in the Hufflepuff dorm, but it was quite a lazy, sleepy late afternoon, so perhaps she’d fallen asleep.

            Elspeth was breathing annoyingly hard by the time she had checked the Gryffindor common room and found no one and was heading up to the girls’ dorm. This stupid fatigue. She just needed to get better already. When she entered the room, she had to pause again to lean against the wall, but when her head stopped spinning, she was able to hear low voices and giggling coming from Chandra’s bed.

            Pausing for a moment, Elspeth considered. Maybe she should wait. But both voices were female, so she wasn’t likely to catch Chandra doing anything too embarrassing, and most of Chandra’s close friends were hers as well, so it shouldn’t be too much of a problem to pull Chandra away for a minute to ask for her advice. She bounced nervously on the balls of her feet for a minute before heading over to Chandra’s bed and pulling back the curtains around it.

            “Um, Chandra, can I talk to you for a mi—”

            Elspeth felt her jaw literally drop as she stared. Chandra was on her bed, her robes carelessly piled in a heap on the floor, shirt half-unbuttoned, tie flung sideways across one shoulder. Her knees were on either side of Nissa’s waist, and Nissa herself was wearing absolutely nothing on her top half. The two looked up, and Nissa froze as Elspeth spoke. Chandra went slightly pink. “Now isn’t actually, um…can it wait?” she asked, as Nissa frantically reached behind herself and grabbed a pillow to cover her chest.

            “I’m so sorry!” Elspeth squeaked, her voice going high and scratchy.

            “If it’s really important, I can—” Chandra cleared her throat. “I mean, um…”

            “No! I think you just answered my question!” Elspeth babbled. “It’s fine, I’ll tell you later, everything’s fine, I’m sorry, please just go back to what you were doing.” She backed away, letting the curtain fall back into place. As she hurried out of the room, she heard Chandra and Nissa starting to giggle nervously.

            She leaned against the wall outside again. Well, she thought, rather shamefacedly, that had been incredibly stupid, but she supposed she had an answer to her question. Thinking ‘it won’t be embarrassing because there isn’t a boy in there’ when she was literally coming to ask Chandra about the feasibility of having a crush on a girl had been pretty silly. But at least now she knew for sure that Chandra wouldn’t find it odd. And neither would Nissa, presumably. And maybe that was all she needed. She blushed slightly again at the glimpse she’d gotten of Nissa’s breasts, and found herself wondering a little guiltily what her pen pal would look like if she slid the robes off her shoulders and—

            Time for a cold shower. Then she could go back to trying to finish this letter.


	6. Sick and Tired

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a virus is spreading through the girls' dormitories, and Harry offers to help Luna out.

Nothing was going right. Ral stared moodily at the players circling the Quidditch field on brooms and tried not to let his attention be drawn three rows back and two seats to the left, where Emmara was practically climbing into Jace’s lap. The gauntlet still wasn’t doing anything. Well, it spit colored sparks when someone cast a spell near it, but that was it. This was officially the worst school year Ral had had in his life. He knew he needed to start paying attention to his schoolwork again, or he was going to be in a lot of trouble, what with N.E.W.T.s on the horizon, but he couldn’t seem to focus lately. Hell, he could barely get himself to eat.

            With a sigh, he stared up at Elspeth, who was circling around the outside of the field on her broom. Something about that seemed odd to him. Shouldn’t she be chasing the Quaffle? But it was being tossed back and forth almost at the other end of the field now. Ral saw one of her teammates tilt her broom back toward Elspeth, saw a hand waved in a frustrated gesture. Elspeth’s broom waggled in the air as she turned it again, and Ral felt uneasiness roiling up in his stomach. He’d watched her play Quidditch before, and her motions tended to be strong and purposeful, but now she was almost wobbling, and though she seemed to be trying to turn in the direction of the Quaffle, the nose of her broom was wavering. It was almost as if she was losing her grip and going to—

            The broom veered sharply to the right as Elspeth slipped off. Ral was on his feet before he knew what he was doing, wand in hand. “Wingardium leviosa!” he screamed, over the roar of the crowd, half of whom hadn’t even noticed. Heat shot through one hand and a shower of sparks burst from the base of his wand, but Elspeth’s tumble jerked to a stop abruptly, as she hung, head lolling, from the robes that Ral had caught with the levitation charm.

            A long moment passed before anyone seemed to realize what had happened, a moment that Ral used to control the trembling in his limbs, to force the sparks to dissipate, and to slowly, gently bring Elspeth to the ground. Then the crowd went silent, a whistle blew, and Ral found himself halfway across the field along with Professors Granger and Potter, kneeling beside Elspeth’s crumpled form. Her face was horrifyingly white and pale, and for an instant, he thought she wasn’t breathing, but then she blinked her eyes and opened them.

            “Merlin,” she murmured. “What happened?” She made a movement as if she were trying to sit up, and Professor Potter put out a hand to stop her, but before he could, she moaned and sank back down. “I’m so dizzy.”

            “Let’s get her to the hospital wing,” Professor Potter said.

            “She doesn’t have any broken bones,” agreed Professor Granger. “I don’t know what’s wrong.” Ral hadn’t even noticed the tip of her wand glowing, or heard any kind of muttered incantation. He was too busy trying to control the heat building in his right hand again. Just a few more deep breaths should do it.

            Professor Potter carefully picked Elspeth up, waving Ral back as he did so. “I’ve got her,” he said, and Ral found himself trailing miserably after the two of them as they began to make their way off the Quidditch pitch. A sick glance back told him that Jace was finally standing up and looking in their direction, but his hand was still tightly entwined with Emmara’s, and his hair was sticking up every which way. A sudden, tight ball in the pit of Ral’s stomach accompanied a brief vision of Jace sitting in his lap, looking at _him_ like that. No. He wasn’t jealous. Jace should have been the first person to notice that Elspeth was flying erratically. He was usually the most observant of the three of them. It _had_ to be a spell of some kind.

            Ral followed the two professors carrying Elspeth right down to the hospital wing, until Professor Granger turned and told him, “I’m sorry, Ral, you’ll need to wait outside.”

            Elspeth managed to look up and give him a small smile. “I’m okay,” she murmured. “Just a virus. Sorry to worry you.”

            Sinking miserably back against the wall, Ral watched as the door to the hospital wing closed behind them. Professor Potter came out a moment later. “I’m sure she’ll be fine,” he said. “I’m sorry, Ral, I’d better get back to the pitch and figure out whether the game is going to finish or not.”

            Jace arrived minutes after Professor Potter had left, actually alone, for once.

            “How’s Elspeth?” he asked Ral breathlessly.

            “I don’t know.” Ral stared at the door to the hospital wing, feeling abruptly unmoored and awkward. This was one of the first times Jace had spoken directly to him this year. Was he really under a spell? Or was Elspeth right; was Ral just desperately jealous? If he _was_ under a spell, then Ral shouldn’t be angry with _Jace_ , should he? And yet he was, a hot, hurt, frustrated feeling that rose inside his chest and choked him until he could barely speak.

            “What happened?” Jace fidgeted, leaning against the door awkwardly.

            Ral ran a hand through his hair. “She fell off her broom. She said she felt dizzy.”

            “Is she okay? Did she break anything?”

            He really hadn’t been paying attention at all, had he?

            “I caught her,” Ral said. “Because _I_ was watching her.”

            At least Jace had the grace to look ashamed of himself. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “Emmara wanted to—” He paused, the expression on his face turning peculiar. “I just—I’ve never been with someone like this, you know? I guess I haven’t been a great friend this year, have I? Fuck, forget it. Is she okay?”

            “She didn’t get hurt from the fall,” Ral said slowly. “But she’s exhausted and dizzy, and I don’t know why.”

            “There’s a virus going round the girls’ dorm,” Jace said. “Emmara told me. Maybe it’s that?”

            “How’s Emmara?” Ral asked abruptly.

            The expression on Jace’s face shifted from worry into a sort of happy dreaminess. “Merlin, she is _amazing_ ,” he said. “She’s so nice, she’s always worrying about me. She—” he broke off. “Oh, uh, you meant, is she sick.”

            Ral nodded, eyebrows climbing into his hair.

            “No, she’s okay so far.” Jace shuffled awkwardly. “Uh, Ral…do you…” he paused, then shook his head. “Never mind.”

            So, Emmara wasn’t sick. The anger in Ral’s chest collapsed into a kind of peculiar, rapidly-pulsing ache. Could she be responsible for Elspeth being sick? It made a weird kind of sense, if she’d cast a spell on Jace, for some reason. But then, he’d expect himself to be getting sick as well, and he wasn’t. Nothing made any sense. He pressed an angry hand to his head, just in time for several bright sparks of electricity to leap from his wrist to land with painful jolts on his cheeks.

            Jace jerked in surprise. “What was that?” he asked, and, to Ral’s surprise, he almost thought he saw concern brewing in Jace’s dark eyes.

            “Just having some trouble controlling my lightning spells,” Ral said gruffly, before he thought about it, and then realized a moment later that he wouldn’t have felt comfortable saying that to anyone who wasn’t Elspeth or Jace. And that maybe saying it to Jace right now was a mistake.

            Taking a half-step forward, his friend laid his hand on Ral’s arm. “Maybe we should—”

            “Jace, there you are!” Jace jerked back, with a look that Ral thought hopefully might almost have been annoyance, at the sound of Emmara’s voice. The next instant he was turning around, though, plastering a smile across his face.

            “Sorry, Emmara, I didn’t mean to abandon you,” he said lightly. “I just needed to check on Elspeth.”

            “Well, is she all right?” Emmara asked. She was short and fat, Ral thought viciously, although he had to admit she looked less childish with her fluffy hair framing her face instead of trapped in two plaits, the way it had been when he first met her.

            “We don’t really know what’s wrong.” Jace shifted uncomfortably. “She’s not hurt, though. Might just be that virus.”

            Emmara pulled a face. “I’m just waiting to catch it myself,” she said. “I haven’t felt bad so far, but it’s nearly everyone. It’s just a matter of time.” Her slight French accent grew a little more pronounced as she spoke. “I ’ope it isn’t my fault that people are catching it. I could ’ave brought something over from the Continent, perhaps.”

            “I’m sure it wasn’t your fault, my love.” The term of endearment sat strangely on Jace’s lips as he crossed to put his arms around Emmara. Jace, who was usually afraid of public displays of affection, unless it was hugging his mother, and even then, for the past few years, he had turned tomato-red when doing so. He tipped Emmara’s face up to him and kissed her gently. Ral growled unintelligibly.

            “Perhaps we should get back to the pitch?” Emmara suggested. “They are substituting in another player for Elspeth, so they will be starting again soon, I would imagine.” Her pale blue eyes gleamed mockingly in her heart-shaped face, but her voice was solicitous. “Ral, would you like to come with us?”

            “Nah, I’m good,” Ral said. “I’d rather stay until I know that Elspeth’s going to be okay.”

            “Don’t worry too much.” Emmara stepped forward and laid her hand on Ral’s arm. She smelled like Jace, which made the gaping hole in Ral’s stomach open up just a little further. This close, her breasts brushed lightly against the front of his arm, and he felt himself growing a little warm. “I’m sure Elspeth will be all right,” Emmara said comfortingly, and she went up on her tiptoes and brushed a gentle kiss across his cheek in highly European fashion. Ral swallowed hard.

            “Come on, Emmara,” Jace said, suddenly sharp, and Ral stared helplessly at the glare crossing his friend’s face. He shook Emmara off his arm, and she smiled sweetly and went back to Jace, glancing over her shoulder at Ral as the two of them left.

            As soon as they were gone, Ral collapsed back against the wall. “Fuck,” he muttered.

~

            Harry sighed as he pushed open the door to the teachers’ lounge. He was tired and had a nagging headache that never quite seemed to go away these days.

            “No, it’s none of these. Drat.” Luna and Hermione were seated in the middle of the floor, apparently poring over a pile of thick books that were presumably from the Hogwarts library. They had the old, dusty, unused look of books that had been tucked into the Restricted Section and then forgotten.

            “Do you need any help?” he asked, with a tired sigh. At least his favorite armchair was free, he thought to himself as he sank into it and applied a cold hand to his tender head.

            “No, we’ve just finished looking through all these.” Hermione sat back, frowning. “You really can’t remember anything except boats?” she asked Luna, who shook her head.

            “What are you looking for?” Harry asked with some interest. Over the years, Hermione’s pet research projects had been both fascinating and generally useful.

            Luna looked up. “A story,” she said. “I think I remember seeing it when we were part of the DA. But I can’t remember anything about the title of the book except that it makes me think of boats.”

            “Boats?” Harry echoed, scratching his head. “That’s a bit odd.”

            “We know,” Hermione sighed. “We’re pretty sure it’s not actually about boats, but we can’t figure out why it would make her think of them.”

            “So why are you looking for a book that isn’t about boats?” Harry sank down into the squashy armchair with a sigh of relief at getting the weight off his sore feet.

            Luna and Hermione glanced at each other, and then Luna looked up and pushed her hair out of her eyes. “I found…” she trailed off and chewed on her lip, then shivered.

            “Do you want me to tell the story?” Hermione asked, and, to Harry’s surprise, she put a hand on Luna’s shoulder.

            Nodding, Luna suddenly turned and buried her face against Hermione’s side. The other woman froze briefly, then awkwardly put an arm around her. “I’m sorry,” Luna said, her voice muffled by Hermione’s robes. “I keep thinking that I—that I am all right, and then I think about it, and it’s just all—” she waved a hand, “—all dark and cold, somehow.”

            “Here.” Harry fumbled in his robes until he found the bar of chocolate he always carried around with him. It was slightly squishy but he pushed it into Luna’s hand anyway. “This might help.”

            “Thank you,” Luna said. “What a good idea.”

            On the floor, Hermione shifted her sitting position as if she expected Luna to draw back to eat the chocolate, but instead, Luna only sat up slightly, still leaning against her, as she began to unwrap it. Harry watched in some confusion. He hadn’t realized Luna was quite so cuddly.

            “So,” Harry prompted. “Hermione. Story?”

            Instead of starting the story, Hermione was just staring down at Luna’s bright head, her mouth hanging very slightly open. She drew in her breath sharply when Harry spoke. “O-oh! Of course.” Drawing herself up, she gave him a brief outline of an experience Luna had clearly told her about at length.

            As she did, Harry felt a cold lump congealing in the pit of his stomach. Whatever Luna had stumbled onto sounded like serious dark magic. Especially since Luna clearly was still being affected by whatever it was. And if something had gotten _out_ , and they didn’t even know what it was—it could be causing a lot of damage right now. The longer someone left it alone, the more damage it would do.

            “I think I better go give it a look,” Harry said slowly, as Hermione finished.

            “Oh, Harry, no. We need you here. I know the Ministry is absolutely awful at this kind of thing because of all the bureaucracy, but can’t you call in a favor from the Aurors?”

            “They’re still pretty stretched thin,” Harry said, shifting uncomfortably. “I mean, I guess I could. I just—” he fidgeted. “—it’s not that I don’t trust them.”

            “You know you’re a bit paranoid,” Hermione said soothingly, but Luna straightened up.           

            “Would you?” she asked. Harry and Hermione looked at her. “ _Would_ you go look? I’ve been awfully worried about it. I didn’t know who to talk to, and I thought I ought to have been able to deal with it myself, I mean, you know, I was in the DA myself and everything, but I’m so out of practice…”

            Hermione looked from Luna to Harry, opened and closed her mouth, then sighed. “I suppose if you were only gone for a little while, we could cover your classes,” she said slowly. “It would be a bit of a crunch, but…” She frowned. “Don’t go by yourself, Harry,” she said. “That’s absolutely foolish. If it’s some kind of very dark magic, then you’d better take someone along. Maybe several someones.”

            Although he didn’t like it, Harry had to admit she had a point. “Yeah,” he said.

            “I volunteer,” a voice drawled from the other side of the room. Draco Malfoy sat up with a yawn from the couch on the other side of the room where he must have been napping.

            “ _Really_ ,” Hermione protested.

            “Sorry.” Draco shrugged. “I didn’t want to interrupt you.”

            “I suppose it doesn’t matter that you were _eavesdropping_ ,” Hermione responded severely. “But we can’t have you walking off as well. Who would cover Potions?”

            “Slughorn owes me a favor or two.” Draco shrugged. “I’m sure we can drag him back out of retirement for a week. Besides, Harry, you’ll want me there.”

            Harry stared at him. It was true that for the past several years, he and Draco had been working together well. A little awkwardly, maybe—their childhood history wasn’t going to vanish immediately, and Harry didn’t entirely know how to deal with the fact that Draco might have had a worse childhood than he himself had. But they weren’t exactly close. Whenever he tried to breach the wall that seemed to have grown up between them, it felt as if Draco would pull back, and whenever that happened, Harry wondered why he was trying. They’d never been friends, so why did he want that now? He shook his head.

            “Erm,” he said. “Why?”

            Draco lifted his eyebrows at him, and Harry squirmed internally. That expression always made him feel hot and cold at the same time, and right now it was worse than usual. “Because, my dear Harry,” Draco sat up slowly and ran a long-fingered hand through his ash-blond hair, “I have the kind of insider experience with dark magic that you lot can only dream of. How many truly cooperative ex-Death-Eaters can you get hold of on short notice? Or do you _really_ think that this has nothing to do with Voldemort’s crowd?”

            “It’s far too old for that!” Hermione said indignantly.

            Draco gave her an indulgent smile. “The original enchantment, certainly. The _broken_ enchantment? Wizards don’t just go around letting nasty things out of containment for shits and giggles.”

            Hermione huffed in irritation, but gave a sigh and a nod. “A week or two of Slughorn won’t kill anyone, I suppose,” she said in a longsuffering tone of voice. “If you really feel this _must_ be taken care of immediately.”

            “I think that it would be a good idea,” Luna responded before Harry had the chance, and Hermione sighed again.

            “All right. Do give me a day or two to keep the disruption to the students to a minimum.”

            Harry nodded, then glanced over again and caught Draco’s eye. There was a hidden smirk on his friend’s face. So, Harry thought, maybe he wasn’t the only one who found the thought of battling something other than unruly teenagers to be a little bit exciting. He shook his head ruefully. Sometimes he wondered if he was really cut out to be a teacher.


	7. Fated Infatuation

            Jace woke up late after being unable to fall asleep until something like three am. Despite having Emmara sharing his bed, he’d been having a much worse time sleeping than he had in years, and uneasily, disloyally, he wondered if he just slept better with _Ral_ in the same bed, not just another warm body. But Emmara was his girlfriend—surely she ought to be a good replacement. Even _that_ thought made him feel guilty. He didn’t want to _replace_ Ral, but he didn’t want to lose Emmara, either.

            She seemed pretty irritated at him for oversleeping this morning, and maybe it wasn’t fair to blame her. She’d had to practically drag him out of bed in an effort to get him to breakfast on time, and it hadn’t really worked—he’d been too sleepy and logy to make it down before the end of breakfast, and then his stomach was too heavy for him to eat anything, though he snagged a roll before his first class.

            “Why don’t you just skip class?” Emmara suggested, but Jace thought uneasily that he’d been doing that too often these days. N.E.W.T.s were coming up, and he couldn’t _completely_ blow them off, but when he said that to Emmara, she stalked off after saying icily, “I would think you’d recognize that a single class isn’t going to change your whole career.”

            He’d meant to apologize as soon as he got through his first class, which was Potions, but somehow, by the end of it, he was feeling tired and frustratingly guilty. He hadn’t worked on his individual project in several weeks now, and the only reason he wasn’t in trouble was that he and Ral had a lot of leeway about when they were supposed to be working on them. But listening to Professor Malfoy’s lecture both inflamed his curiosity—since what he was working on was a new version of the Bottled Dreams potion he still hadn’t perfected—and made him feel deeply concerned about not getting _any_ work on it done. Up until today, it had seemed like a perfect opportunity to snog Emmara, but somehow that was feeling a lot less like a good excuse and a lot more like a good way to get himself expelled when the teachers found out. So he slipped out of Potions without talking to Emmara and hurried up to the tower where the individual studies were carried out.

            He hadn’t seen Ral in Potions or at breakfast, so he was surprised to find his friend seated on his customary bench, chewing his lip and staring at the gauntlet in front of him.

            “Um, hi,” Jace said, as he started gathering the ingredients he had stored and taking them over to his part of the room.

            Ral looked up and paused. “Haven’t seen you here in a while,” he said.

            Running a hand through his hair, Jace laughed uncomfortably. “Yeah, I guess.” He shuffled his feet. “I was, uh…”

            “Skiving class to snog Emmara?”

            “Um…”

            “Yeah, probably a bad idea. Don’t think the profs will be happy if they find out.”

            Jace rubbed at his forehead. “It’s not really your business,” he said tightly, caught between the uncomfortable feeling that Ral was right and a nagging impulse to defend himself.

            “Oh, yeah, sorry, stupid me, I forgot. I’m not your best friend anymore, am I?”

            The words hurt. “What? Ral—no—I just—”

            “Whatever.” Ral turned his back to Jace and went back to working at his gauntlet.

            Jace swallowed and numbly continued gathering his ingredients. Trying to chop his asphodel evenly was a nightmare—he hadn’t done any potions preparation in several months, and he was squinting through a haze in front of his eyes. After ten minutes of failing to get anywhere, he looked up and sighed. “I—I’m sorry,” he said.

            Ral sighed as well. “Yeah, me too.”

            “It’s just—you know—I’ve never really been in love before,” Jace managed, putting down his knife. “And I guess—Emmara seems to think that the Potions thing—isn’t that important.” The words rang rather hollow in his mouth, his stomach rolling with a sudden strange nausea. It _was_ that important. It was one of his favorite things to do. But Emmara had always seemed to assume he’d rather spend time with her than in a “dusty old lab” and he hadn’t wanted to disappoint her, for some reason. “I’m afraid she’ll dump me,” he blurted.

            Quite slowly, Ral turned around and looked at him. “So what?” he said. “I mean, sure, she’s cute, but you’d get over it. Isn’t your favorite subject more important than getting laid?”

            “But I’m in love with her.” The words were out before Jace had a chance to think, and even as he said them, they sounded strange. _Why_ was he in love with her? She was gorgeous, of course, but she wasn’t that much more attractive than, say, Chandra, with whom he’d had a rather ill-advised snog two years ago. And he was close friends with Chandra. What did he and Emmara even have in common? Still, the thought of ending things with Emmara made him feel vaguely ill and frightened, and he sheared away from it.

            “Jace, you’re just…you’re acting weird.”

“I’m not!” Jace responded immediately, then paused. “I mean…I don’t know. Maybe I am. She makes me feel special, I guess. I don’t want to lose that.”

            He expected Ral to protest, but instead his friend opened his mouth, made a noise, closed it again. “Mm,” he said. “I see.” Almost like a doctor assessing symptoms.

            “Anyway, you _are_ my best friend,” Jace continued hurriedly. “I’m sorry if I’ve been a shit this year.”

            Ral’s shoulder went up and down, but he put his gauntlet down and walked across the room to Jace’s lab station. “Show me what you’re trying to do, I’m bored,” was all he said.

            It was much easier to remind himself of what he’d been trying to do with the project when he was explaining it to Ral instead of going over it again and again in his head. As he talked, he slowly started to slip back into the usual frame of mind—it wasn’t his favorite thing to do, maybe, but he did enjoy it a lot. The only thing that was oddly disconcerting was his sudden awareness of Ral’s presence.

            The two of them had always been pretty physically close, but, Jace realized, it had been months since they’d last touched, and he didn’t know what the touch had been—either an accidental elbow in the middle of the night or maybe, just maybe, a brief, awkward touch on the shoulder as they parted at Platform 9 ¾ for the summer. Presumably, the length of time it had been was what was responsible for the sudden tingling thrill that ran down his shoulder when Ral brushed against him.

            And he hadn’t really had many people stand this close to him in a while, except for Emmara, so it wasn’t really _surprising_ that he’d find Ral’s breath on his ear hard to ignore. Still, it was definitely kind of distracting. He had a strange feeling that he’d been this close to Ral recently, even though he knew he hadn’t, and he had to shake off the impression.

            “What else?” Ral prompted, and Jace realized he’d let his voice trail off.

            “Oh, well, I guess I’ve been trying to figure out a way to—to—” He’d turned when Ral addressed him, and he couldn’t turn away, couldn’t move his eyes away from Ral’s mouth. This was—probably not okay, right? Most of the time, staring at someone’s mouth meant you wanted to—but he was dating Emmara. Cheating on her was _definitely_ not okay. Not that Jace wanted to cheat on her. Especially not with Ral. Because that would be all kinds of awkward. He tried again. “I’ve been trying to improve on the formula. It’s got a few side effects like dizziness and disorientation, and I think that those could be mitigated if I can just tweak the ingredients some.”

            “You don’t think that might just be what happens when you have someone else’s dream in your head?”

            “I know it isn’t.” Jace stuck out his tongue. “So do you.”

            “I dunno, your dreams in my head are usually pretty disorienting.”

            “Only because they’re usually nightmares.” Jace sighed. “That’s another thing. If I can make it easier to bottle dreams, it’d be nice, because then I might be able to catch some of the non-terrible ones.”

            “Oh yeah? Like what?”

            Which was when Jace remembered the dream he’d had the night before. He’d dreamed that he’d woken up and looked down at the lump beside him in the bed, and it had rolled over, and it was Ral, not Emmara. Which wasn’t all that surprising, since he’d spent a lot more time sharing a bed with Ral than sharing one with Emmara. Except then he’d leaned down and kissed Ral on the lips, just as if it _was_ Emmara, and when he’d woken up he’d been—heat rose to the tips of Jace’s ears. “Uh,” he said intelligently. “I, uh, I’d better get back to working on this.”           

            “That good, huh?” Ral smirked at him. “Was it even about Emmara?”

            Jace’s cheeks flamed hotter than he’d ever felt them. “O-Of course,” he stammered. “Why would I have dreams about somebody I’m not dating?”

            “Oh my god, it wasn’t, was it? Was it about _Elspeth_?”

            “No! God, no! That would be so weird!” Elspeth was like—his big sister or something, despite the fact they were basically the same age. _So_ , said a voice in his head, _doesn’t that make Ral like your brother?_

            “Was it a boy? Is that why you’re so embarrassed? Was it Gideon?”

            “I—I don’t remember,” Jace said desperately. _You’re dating Emmara,_ he reminded himself fiercely, but the brush of Ral’s warmth at his back was almost painful in his awareness.

            “Fine,” Ral sniffed, sounding more animated than Jace had heard him all this year. “Keep your secrets.” He ruffled Jace’s hair, and Jace felt his eyes slide closed because that just felt so _right_. This whole year, ever since he got back from France, everything had felt a little bit _off_. He liked Emmara a lot—he loved her—she was a whirlwind of tantalizing excitement, but it was a stressful whirlwind. Well, no one could say Ral wasn’t a stressful whirlwind as well, but—but. Jace stalled. Right now, the only thing he wanted to do was turn around, grab Ral, and kiss him. Hard. And possibly remove several layers of clothing as well.

            All right. So maybe he should break up with Emmara. Because then he could snog Ral breathless. Assuming Ral was up for it, of course. Still, Jace thought, a little dizzily, he thought this might be worth risking. Snogging Ral breathless. Yeah. But he couldn’t do that until he’d broken up with Emmara, and he couldn’t do that before this evening, when he could get a minute alone with her. So that meant snogging Ral would have to wait—Jace groaned under his breath—for at least six hours.

            Well, he might as well get some work done in the meantime. Still, before he went back to explaining the potion properly, Jace leaned back against Ral and squeezed his hand. He figured he owed himself that much.

~

            “So the plan is we hang out here at this—” Draco struggled not to turn up his nose, “—er, authentic Muggle, er, establishment, while we try to find Luna’s mystery broken dark enchantment?”

            Harry grinned at him, and Draco tried to pretend the grin had no effect. Damn Potter. The way he scrunched up his nose without realizing it when he was smiling broadly—just for a moment, just at the beginning—was stupidly endearing and also rather infuriatingly attractive. Draco knew that falling for Potter was a truly awful idea—the social stigma of a man dating a man was bad enough, even post-war, but that wasn’t even taking into account the fact that the object of his affection was _Harry bloody Potter_ , savior of the Wizarding World, and Draco was an ex-Death Eater.

            “It’s called a Bed and Breakfast, Malfoy,” he said. “Because they give you _bed_ and _breakfast_. Not exactly hard to remember.”

            “Yes, yes. Remind me again _why_ we’re here?”

            “You don’t want to spend our charming vacation in an equally charming location?” Draco glared at him, and Harry grinned again. Damn it. “No one’ll be able to find us here,” he said pragmatically. “Something like this could attract some nasty dark wizards. The aurors still haven’t got all of them, you know.”

            “Camouflage,” Draco said, turning the idea over slowly. “With, perhaps, the added bonus of annoying your dear colleague?”

            “Would I do that?” Harry responded with a wicked grin. “C’mon, it’ll be an adventure for once.”

            “You know I’m not one of your Golden Trio members,” Draco said snidely, deliberately using a term coined by the Daily Prophet that he knew that Harry hated. “I’ve never been all that big on adventures.”

            “Maybe you’ve just never been on adventures with the right person before.”

            Draco stumbled slightly as they started up the stairs of the old Muggle building, ending up with his face dangerously close to the worn carpet. “Oh, and I suppose _you’re_ the right person to have an adventure with?” He didn’t manage to lace his words with quite as much sarcasm as he’d intended, but either way, Harry ignored the tone.

            “Of course I am.”

            “Of course you are,” Draco mumbled in echo, then tripped in earnest. “God, Potter, couldn’t we have just apparated to the approximate location? Made this a day trip?”

            Harry didn’t bother to grace this with a response, since it was a stupid idea. Apparating was a hassle from Hogwarts to begin with, and besides that, there was almost certainly a befuddlement or other sort of redirection charm around the place they were looking for. It would be easier to have a nearby base of operation. Easier, just inconvenient. Especially since they were taking Muggle accommodations. Draco sighed and hoisted his trunk up the rest of the narrow flight of stairs, not bothering with the levitation charm he knew would earn him a reproving look from Harry.

            For his part, Harry was pausing outside a door, digging a key out of his appallingly tight Muggle jeans. Muggle clothing was stupidly uncomfortable, Draco had discovered, but as Harry bent over, he raised an interested eyebrow. It did have certain perks. “I hope you at least reserved us a room with two beds,” he drawled. “I know the younger generation have taken to sharing without much thought, but I kick. And occasionally try to hex people in my sleep.”

            “Good to know,” Harry grunted, shoving the door open with his shoulder and dragging his own battered suitcase into the room with him. “And, yes, Draco, I did get two beds, I know you like your space.”

            Light flooded the room suddenly, and despite the fact that Draco had spent enough time in places where Ral Zarek and Hermione Granger had installed electric lights, he was startled. Rooms always looked a bit different by Muggle lighting than they did by magical. Or maybe his brain was just playing tricks on him.

            It was actually an oddly nice room. Definitely not ornate, nothing like the mansion Draco had grown up in. But maybe a little bit like his rooms at Hogwarts. It was small, with a pattern of blue flowers on the wallpaper, plain powder blue curtains, and two beds with comfortable-looking bedspreads and—a lot of pillows. Why were there so many pillows? He stared. That was at least six pillows per bed. Did Muggles use pillows for something other than wizards did? What use could anyone possibly have for six pillows?

            Wrenching his attention away from the frankly absurd number of pillows, he noted the TV sitting on the wooden dresser across from the beds. Something else he didn’t really have much experience with. Draco shook his head tiredly and went to set his trunk down at the foot of the bed, letting the door swing shut behind him. “I suppose we’ll need a plan,” he said, with a frown. “We have some hints from Lovegood, but we don’t necessarily know where to look. Did you have any ideas?”

            “It’s basically Seventh Year all over again,” Harry said with a rueful laugh. “Less difficult, really, because we know where to start and we’re only looking for one evil dark artifact for a change. Pity ’Mione couldn’t come, though. She’s damn good at this kind of thing.” And, oh, that look. Whenever Harry talked about Hermione, he got such a tender look in his eyes. Draco shook his head. None of his business. He certainly had no right to be jealous.

            “Merlin,” Draco sighed. “What’s next? Are you going to start pining for Weasley?”

            Someone knocked on the door. He and Harry exchanged looks. No one other than Hermione and Luna should know where they were, and they’d just walked in—it was unlikely to be a maid or anything like that. (Did ‘bed and breakfast’ establishments employ maids? Draco didn’t know.) Carefully, Draco reached for his wand. “Let me get it,” he said tersely.

            “I’ll back you up.” Draco was mildly surprised at the lack of argument, but he filed it under ‘deal with later’, and carefully moved toward the door, hand still on his wand. Unfortunately, the old building didn’t even have a peephole in the door. It did have a chain lock, however. Draco slipped the chain on and opened the door a crack, coming face to face with a sudden deluge of freckles underneath a shock of red hair.

            He blinked. “Wait. Weasley?”

            A wand was shoved under his chin. “Where the fuck is Harry, what’ve you done with him?”


	8. Teysa, Orzhov Scion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Chandra punches Jace, Harry plays mediator, and Ral meets someone new.

            “Hey, um, can I talk to you?”

            “Jace, I was just looking for you! Have you had anything to eat all day?” Emmara sounded faintly displeased, and he paused to think about it.

            “Well, I guess not, but I wanted to—”

            “Have you had anything to _drink_ all day?” she asked severely. They were in the corridor just outside the Hufflepuff boys’ dormitory, where he’d finally managed to track her down after class. He might’ve stayed a little late working with Ral in the independent studies room. He hadn’t noticed what time it was, too wrapped up in his work and in the fact that this was the first time he’d really spent time with Ral all semester, which was honestly a little worrisome.

            “Uh,” he said, shaking his head, trying to get him mind back on the conversation with Emmara. _You get to snog Ral if you break up with her_ , he reminded himself, then felt abruptly guilty for thinking it. Shuffling awkwardly, he tried to engage with the question she had asked him. “No, I haven’t, I don’t think. Emmara, I—”

            “Here, have this, you idiot. I saved you some dinner.” She pressed a sandwich into his hand—roast beef, his favorite—and the flask of water she always carried.

            Jace squirmed, feeling even guiltier. “I really, um, this is kind of, um, I need to talk to you…” he trailed off.

            “Eat and drink something, and then I will be happy to listen.”

            “I’m not—sure you’ll be happy—” he said haltingly, but he took a bite of the sandwich and washed it down with a gulp of water just to appease her. She stepped forward, breasts brushing slightly against his front, leaned up and kissed his cheek, then rested her head softly against his shoulder.

            “ _Merci_ , Jace. You know, I do worry about you. Now, what did you want to talk to me about?”

            Jace’s stomach twisted. She was so lovely, and so caring, and so thoughtful. She gave a little wriggle against him, and he remembered why he’d asked her out in the first place. That cute little toss of her hair. The adorable little smile. The curve and swell of her breasts even beneath her robes. God, she was beautiful. And she’d said yes to _him,_ Jace Beleren, grubby, boring, nerdy _legilimens_. She wasn’t bothered by the legilimency thing; unlike a lot of people, she found it fascinating. She’d helped him devise all kinds of tests for it—how could he have thought she didn’t care if he succeeded at what he was good at? Potions just wasn’t where his main talent lay.

            “Um,” he said. “Oh, it’s nothing, I guess. I’m just really tired. And anxious.”

            She looked up at him from under her lashes. “I could help with that, perhaps?”

            Biting his lip, Jace nodded, feeling heat creep up his ears and down his stomach. “Mm, yeah, that, um, that would be nice.”

            “Let me get those robes off,” she breathed, pulling his head down for a long, lingering kiss. Funny, Jace thought vaguely as his hands slid down her shoulders, she smelled almost like the lab, that weird chemical smell mixed with ozone. It was strangely comforting.

~

            Ral decided not to go to dinner. He figured, if he was just going to be dripping sparks everywhere, other people might be a little uncomfortable with him around. He’d been getting through to Jace—his friend had almost been fucking _normal_ while they were playing around in the lab. Fuck, he’d almost thought—the way Jace was looking at him and brushing up against him, that just _maybe_ he was actually—Ral shook his head fiercely. They’d always been pretty touchy-feely, especially for guys. Didn’t mean that Jace thought of him that way. Didn’t mean he thought of Jace that way, either. Obviously. He wasn’t jealous, he told himself again, tiredly. It was starting to sound a little fake even to him.

            Moodily, he kicked at a stone, and watched it skitter across the lake, sent a bolt of lightning shooting after it, and then guiltily realized he hadn’t even formed the spell in his mind. It had just sort of—happened.

            “Good evening, Mr. Zarek.”

            Ral jumped about a foot into the air, then whirled around to find Professor Lovegood standing behind him. She moved stupidly quietly. “Uh, hi,” he said, shuffling his feet, and wondering if she’d seen his little lightning trick.

            “Would you like some help with that?”

            Ah, fuck. “With what?”

            “The lightning.” Lovegood smiled, tipping her head to one side. “You’re quite talented with it. Elementalism, I expect. I’d ask if it runs in the family, but you’re a Muggleborn, aren’t you?”

            “Elementalism?” Ral asked sharply.

            “Oh, yes.” The professor waved her hand. “It’s more common in other places in the world, but I think Ms. Nalaar may be one as well. It’s an affinity for a kind of magic dealing with a particular kind of element, sometimes it’s a bit hard to control at first. I have some books on it, if you want.”

            Ral stared down at his hands and back up at her, feeling a little bit deflated. He’d been expecting to have to be on the defensive. “Um, thanks, sure,” he said a little awkwardly.

            “Don’t worry about it, just be careful when you get emotional. It’s generally good form not to electrocute the people around you.”

            “Electrocution means they die,” Ral corrected automatically. “You mean shock.”

            “Oh, yes, it would be good if you could avoid that as well,” Lovegood’s smile widened, and Ral honestly could not tell if she was joking. “I hear you’re working on a magical artifact to transform lightning kinds of things, too. I wonder if you could use it to control your own lightning?”

            That was—an _excellent_ idea. Ral liked that idea very much. Transforming and storing the electricity that he kept accidentally producing—that would make it _so fucking easy_ to power stuff. Damn. Why hadn’t he thought of that? He’d been too busy worrying about his lack of control and trying to make it stop. That was kind of annoyingly dumb. Stupid jerkbrain. He wanted to hit it. “Yeah, probably,” he said, remembering that Professor Lovegood was still there. “Thanks.”

            “You seem a bit worried. Is there anything else you’d like to talk about?”

            He shuffled his feet together. Was it worth it to tell her about Jace possibly-being-under-a-spell? Ral opened his mouth, then shut it again. He really did not want to hear about how he was just jealous again. He was tired of not being taken seriously. He sighed, then shook his head. “It’s nothing. I’ll be fine.”

~

            Jace hadn’t realized that Chandra was even in the Hufflepuff girls’ dorm when he went to look for Emmara, so he was definitely not expecting it when she punched him in the face. It hurt. Jace said, “ow!” indignantly, and then sat down. “Merlin, what the hell, Chandra?”

            “You broke Ral’s heart,” she snapped. “I should be asking you that!”

            “I did not!” Jace protested, dabbing at his nose. There didn’t seem to be any blood.

            “You bloody well did.” She stood over him with her hands on her hips, and Jace cringed slightly.

            “That’s absurd,” he said, as calmly as possible. “How could I possibly have done that?”

            “Gee, I don’t know, maybe by stringing him along and cuddling and all kinds of things—” Jace flinched at that, guiltily thinking back to their interactions the day before, “—for years, and then going and asking out a bitchy French girl instead of him? You guys were _sleeping together_.”

            “Okay, yes, but not like that! We’ve been through this about a thousand times!”

            “It still counts!” They stared at each other, breathing hard. Jace was the first to look away, feeling faintly queasy.

            “This is stupid,” he said finally. “I wasn’t stringing Ral along, and I haven’t broken his heart. Have you seen Emmara?”

            At the question, Chandra swelled up as if she was about to explode, but before she could actually punch him again, someone else called her name. “Have you seen Nissa?” Tamiyo asked. The small Ravenclaw gave Jace a rather bemused smile, and then looked back to Chandra.

            “I was just looking for her,” Chandra said, sending Jace another glare. “She’s probably napping. We were up late last night—” Chandra paused, “—um, doing homework.”

            Still rubbing his nose, Jace got slowly to his feet. “Uh huh,” he said. “I’m surprised she’s in _this_ dorm room,” he said pointedly.

            “Do you _want_ me to hit you again?” Chandra snarled. “Sorry, Tamiyo. That’s her bed, over there.”

            Tamiyo nodded in thanks and headed across the room, while Jace continued to watch Chandra nervously out of the corner of his eye. “Nissa,” he heard Tamiyo say, “I’m sorry to wake you, but—Nissa?” Tamiyo looked up uncertainly. “Does she usually sleep this deeply?” she asked.

            Chandra frowned. “No, she’s a pretty light sleeper.” She and Jace looked at each other, and Jace suddenly felt his heart skip a beat.

            “Nissa?” he said as well and hurried across the room. Nissa was huddled in her bed, knees drawn up to her chest, eyes shut. He shook her shoulder, and her head lolled to the side. “Oh, Merlin.”

            “What is it?” Chandra’s voice peaked with sudden terror. “Nissa?” She shouldered Jace out of the way and knelt beside the other girl. “Wake up! Hey!”

            “Is she breathing?” Jace asked, suddenly terrified.

            Chandra uttered a noise that, under other circumstances, might have been comical, a small, breathy squeak. She bent hurriedly over Nissa. “Ye-es,” she said uncertainly after a minute. “Merlin, Nissa, please. Please wake up.”

            “I’ll go get Madam Pomfrey,” Tamiyo said in a small voice.

            Jace stood back, not knowing what to do, trying not to stare as Chandra desperately tried to wake Nissa up. Finally, his friend took Nissa’s hand and pressed it to her cheek in such an affectionate display that Jace suddenly wondered if the two of them were—he covered his face with his hands, thought about Elspeth, tried _not_ to think about this happening to Ral. He felt as if he was going to be sick.

~

            Harry sighed and paused to look out the window at the rapidly-darkening sky. What an evening. First, he’d had to convince Ron that no, Draco wasn’t holding him hostage, yes, he wanted to be here. Then he’d had to convince Draco that Ron wouldn’t fuck everything up simply by being there. He still didn’t actually have a clue how Ron had found them or what he was doing here, because he’d been too damn busy trying to avoid the entire hotel room exploding.

            “Hey, mate.” They’d agreed Ron could at least stay the night, although Draco had been adamant that Ron would be taking the floor on the furthest side of the room from him. Harry, who’d heard a little about Ron’s behavior toward Hermione and Draco in the recent years, was inclined to agree.

            “D’you want to tell me what’s going on now?” Harry said. Maybe he was a little snippy, but he’d actually been looking forward to having a little time by himself with Draco. Was that weird? It might be weird.

            “I got worried about you!” Ron snapped back. “I wanted to talk to you about something, and when I found you, I figured out Malfoy was there as well, and you weren’t at Hogwarts. Can you blame me?”

            “You realize he hasn’t been a threat in…” Harry counted on his fingers, laughed ruefully. “Merlin, almost ten years?”

            “Yeah, well, he could’ve been playing a long game,” Ron muttered, running a hand through his red hair. He held up a hand when Harry looked skeptically back at him. “I know I’ve been fucking up for a while now, but I’ve been trying to do better. I even got a therapist like you suggested.”

            Harry’s eyebrows went up at that. He and Ron had had a screaming match a while back that had culminated in him yelling something about Ron needing a therapist—he hadn’t expected that to be taken seriously, even if he thought it was true. Harry thought, rather guiltily, that he also probably needed a therapist, but he still hadn’t been able to get himself to try and find one. He figured he’d be more comfortable with a Muggle, but that would present its own problems.

            “I fucked up again,” Ron admitted, and that was so surprising to hear from him that Harry turned slowly away from the window to look at him. “I shouldn’t’ve assumed you couldn’t take care of yourself, even if I don’t like Malfoy. Sorry, mate.”

            “Yeah, well, apology accepted,” Harry said warily. “So why were you looking for me?”

            “I want to apologize to Hermione,” Ron said, shuffling his feet on the carpet. “I haven’t talked to her in a few years, and I miss her.” He put a hand to his forehead. “But I don’t want her to think it’s a romantic thing, I just miss her as a friend. I mean, I still think she’s gorgeous, but I don’t fancy her anymore. And I really fucked everything up when we were together.”

            “Yeah, you did,” Harry agreed, leaning back against the window. “But I think she misses you, too.”

            “Yeah?” Ron smiled a little. “I guess that’s good. I was so fucking paranoid after everything, I just…my head was pretty bad there for a while.”

            “Yeah,” Harry agreed. “Mine, too.”

            His friend nodded awkwardly. “It’s not really how I thought life was supposed to go, I guess,” he blurted, staring at the floor. “Y’know? I sort of thought we’d kill the evil wizard and then live happily ever after, me and ’Mione, you and Ginny. Have kids, send them to Hogwarts…and when it didn’t happen like that, I didn’t…” he trailed off again and shook his head. “I dunno. Don’t think I dealt very well.”

            “Mmm.” Harry shuffled his feet again. “I’m shite at this, you know,” he said, abruptly.

            “Oh, yeah, me, too, mate. Sorry for putting you on the spot.”

            “S’okay. Shake?” Harry put out his hand awkwardly, and Ron grinned at him and took it.

            “I promise I’ll fix things up with Hermione. Seriously, what are you doing all the way out here in the middle of nowhere, though?”

            Harry ran a hand through his hair. “Trying to track down a possible dark wizard,” he admitted, and Ron’s eyebrows went into his hair.

            “With only Malfoy as backup?”

            “We’ve worked well together the past few years,” Harry said, aware that he sounded vaguely defensive.

            “Well, I still don’t like him,” Ron answered.

            “And I don’t like you, Weasley.” Draco was back from taking his shower, and Harry glanced over to see that he was wearing an emerald-green robe, open to the waist, his blond hair plastered wetly to his head. The strip of pale, damp skin down the center of his chest was oddly compelling, and Harry had to force himself to look away, in case Draco or Ron noticed he was staring.

            “Oh, piss off, Malfoy,” Ron said tiredly.

            “Oy,” Harry said. “I don’t want you two getting into another argument. You’re both my fuh—my friends—” (that was a strange thought) “—and we’ve got to figure this thing out, in case it really is something dangerous.”

            “Let me help,” Ron said. “I’d feel better.”

            “If he wasn’t alone with the ex-Death Eater, you mean?” Draco drawled. “I don’t particularly want your company, Weasley.”

            Harry squirmed. He hated feeling as if he was playing referee or taking sides, but… “Draco, more people’s not a bad thing,” he said. “I trust Ron, and he’s already helped me take out—well, you know. Voldemort.”

            Draco opened his mouth as if he was about to protest, then shut it again. “I suppose you are more experienced than I, Mr. Weasley,” he said grudgingly. “As long as you’ve got Potter’s back.”

            “Of course I have his back!” Ron said hotly. “It’s you I’d be—”

            “Ron! Shut the fuck up,” Harry said before he could finish. “You’re coming along. Just drop it.”

            Ron ground his teeth together and folded his arms, but he nodded. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll stay here tonight, get some supplies in the morning. Can you tell me what exactly we’re looking for?”

            “Happy to,” Harry agreed warily, letting his eyes slide back to Draco for a moment. He couldn’t read the expression on his friend’s face, but he felt his stomach twist a little guiltily. He needed to get Draco alone at some point to talk, explain, maybe apologize. He’d find time, he promised himself. He would.

~

            Ral was spending a lot of time skulking outside the hospital wing these days. First Elspeth, now Nissa. And now Elspeth wasn’t waking up at all anymore. And Chandra had already had one dizzy spell bad enough that she’d fallen against him during Potions, but Madam Pomfrey _still_ didn’t know what was wrong. Now, given just how dismissive of Emmara Jace had been during their one individual study and how he’d promptly gone back to cooing over her mere hours later, Ral was one hundred percent positive that she had him under a spell and was probably also responsible for the “bug” going round the girls’ dorm. After all, both Elspeth and Nissa were Hufflepuffs. Just like Emmara.

            Naturally, no one was going to listen to him. It was first-year all over again, Ral thought irritably. But fine. He’d saved Jace once, he could do it again. Deciding to stop worrying indecisively and actually _do_ something made him feel a lot better, but he still needed to figure out how to start.

            The door to the hospital wing opened. “But—” someone was saying.

            “I’m sorry,” Madam Pomfrey’s harassed voice said, “but as you are neither enrolled as a student here nor a relative of the young lady in question, I cannot let you see her.”

            “I am—”

            “I don’t care if you’re the Prince of Wales, deary, the answer is still no.” A small figure was maneuvered out of the hospital wing, and the door was shut in her face.

            At first, Ral thought she was a child, since she couldn’t have reached even five feet in height, but glancing down at her, he saw she definitely had too much figure for a child. The young woman looked up and frowned at him. “What?” she snapped.

            “Sorry.” He took a step backward.

            The young woman breathed in and blew out her breath in a sigh, then waved a hand at him. “No, it’s not your fault,” she said glumly. “I was just hoping to see Elspeth, and apparently I am not ‘permitted to do so’.”

            “Who are you?” Ral asked in confusion. She wore a long white robe trimmed with black edges and emblazoned in the center with a round circle with twelve large triangular protrusions radiating outward from it.

            Drawing herself up to her full height, the girl answered, “I am Teysa Karloff of House Orzhov.” Deflating slightly, she continued, “And I’m Elspeth Tirel’s penpal.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I especially enjoyed letting Ron deconstruct the HP epilogue for me. It works a lot better, in my mind, if you think of it as wishful thinking...


	9. Rally

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Ral and Teysa scheme, and Luna and Hermione flirt.

The new arrival turned out to be extremely hungry in addition to frustrated. Ral took her down to the kitchens and politely asked the house elves to get her some food, which they were more than happy to do.

            “So you’re Elspeth’s pen pal?” he said, after Teysa had eaten her way through three pumpkin sandwiches and was finally looking as if she were going to slow down.

            Teysa nodded, neatly patting a few crumbs away from the corner of her mouth with her napkin. “And when I didn’t hear from her in a few weeks, I got concerned,” she explained. “We’ve been writing back and forth for years, and she has never missed a response.”

            Chewing on his lip, Ral made a split-second decision. “Okay, so I think I know who did this to her,” he said, then put up a hand to stop Teysa from rising up into a whirlwind of fury. She would probably have fallen off the high stool they had put her on anyway; her feet were dangling about a foot above the ground. “Nobody believes me, so maybe I—” he grimaced, “—it’s _possible_ that I’m wrong, but I don’t think so.”

            Quickly, he brought Teysa up to speed on the events of the semester.

            “Well,” she said, pulling a face, “I do think you might be jealous—” Ral growled at her, “—but I also think you’re correct, so it doesn’t matter.”

            “I just don’t know what to fucking _do_ about it,” Ral complained. “I mean, I guess I could try to follow Emmara or something? But I don’t even know if that would work, and those aren’t the kind of spells I know how to cast. I’m not so good at subtle.”

            “I don’t know how to cast them, either, but I can direct you to do so.” Teysa’s eyes were sharp. “I’m an excellent tutor, and I have a good knowledge of subterfuge and spying.”

            “But if you can’t cast them yourself—”

            “I’m a squib.” Teysa’s admission made her face screw up as if she’d swallowed a lemon. “I can’t cast spells.”

            Well, that did explain why she wasn’t at school at Hogwarts. “I’m a Muggleborn,” Ral shrugged. “Hell, I nearly went to high school at a Muggle school. Well, I guess I wouldn’t have because I wouldn’t want to leave Jace and Elspeth, but I bet I’d have learned a lot.”

            Teysa’s thin eyebrows went up expressively. “Hm,” she said, as if she hadn’t been expecting that reaction. “Well, I’m sure I can teach you some very useful spells.” She gave him a thin smile. “And then we can figure out exactly what is going on.”

            First things first, Ral thought. They needed a place for Teysa to stay, and spending time in the Hufflepuff common room or dormitories was definitely not a good idea. Ral got on all right with the other Slytherins, but he didn’t spend much time in the dungeon as a rule; someone might notice. He wasn’t close to anyone in Ravenclaw. Well, what was left was pretty obvious. Ral grinned darkly. Emmara was going to be sorry she’d fucked with Jace, and maybe even sorrier that she’d fucked with Nissa.

            “C’mon,” he said to Teysa.

            “Where are we going?” As she asked, she carefully got to her feet, wincing a little. “Damn.”

            “What’s wrong?”

            “It’s nothing,” Teysa snapped, and Ral paused at her sudden irritation, then shrugged.

            “All right then,” he said. “We’re going to find a friend.”

            He had been a little worried that Chandra would still be hanging around the Hospital Wing instead of back in her dorm, but they had to go slowly, partly because Teysa seemed to be limping slightly, and partly because Ral wasn’t sure that he wanted to run into anyone else with her. There might be awkward or annoying questions, since he had no idea what the provisions were for non-wizard visitors at the school who weren’t relatives.

            When they reached the Gryffindor common room, it was deserted apart from Gideon, who had his feet curled up under him as he squatted on the couch, frowning over a Potions textbook. He looked up briefly and nodded at Ral, smiled politely at Teysa.

            “Is that your sister?” he asked Ral.

            “Oh, ah—” Before Ral had quite decided, Teysa smiled winningly and answered for him, “Yes, that’s me.”

            “Um, yeah, Gideon, this is Teysa,” Ral said, wondering if they really looked that much alike. “Teysa, Gideon. Hey, we were just looking for Chandra, is she around?”

            Gideon’s forehead creased back into a frown. “She’s up in the dorm,” he said. “She’s kind of upset. You, um, you might want to be careful going up there. She tends to—break things.”

            “Been there.” Ral shrugged and led Teysa up the stairs towards the Gryffindor girls’ dormitories.

He didn’t bother to knock, opting instead to just throw open the door. This turned out to nearly be a painful error, because a wave of crackling flame was suddenly heading directly for his face. Luckily for him, he’d had his hand on his wand, and he managed to snap it up and shout, “ _Protego_!” before he and Teysa were charred to a crisp.

            “Oh,” Chandra said, dully. “It’s you. Sorry.”

            “Yeah, what’d you think?”

            Chandra was sprawled on her bed, idly playing with her wand—well, maybe not so idly. She stared up at him, sighed, and shrugged.

            “This is Teysa,” Ral said, letting his new friend squeeze in the door behind him. “She’s here to help us get rid of Emmara.”

            “Oh really?” Chandra sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. She looked at Teysa skeptically. “How exactly is a ten-year-old going to help?”

            Teysa stared her down levelly, drawing herself up to her full height of slightly-less-than-five-feet. “I am seventeen and a half,” she said, “and I happen to be the heir to the Orzhov family, so I have a great deal of experience with dark magic.”

            “Huh,” Chandra said. “What are you doing here?”

            “I came to look for Elspeth.”

            “Oh,” said Chandra, then, “Ohhhh. Oh wow.”

            “So can she stay here? Seems like the easiest place for her. I think it’s better if Emmara doesn’t know about her.”

            “Yeah, I’ll figure something out.” Chandra’s face puckered slightly. “Um, I’m sorry about the, um, the fire thing,” she said rapidly, staring at her feet.

            “I’m fine.” Ral rubbed the back of his neck in embarrassment. “It’s not a problem.”

            “I’m not sure what happened.”

            “Professor Lovegood said you might be an elementalist,” Ral offered. “Like me.”

            “A what?”

            He shook his head. “We can talk about it another time. Right now I’d really like to figure out what the fuck Emmara is doing to Jace and the others and how to stop it.”

            “Right. Let’s see how good you two are at magic,” Teysa smirked.

~

Hermione collapsed into bed with a sigh. She had been intending to do a little work this evening, and then read through some of the more promising titles that she and Luna had hunted out of the library, but she was just so tired. Maybe she’d just go to bed early, just this once—

            A knock on her door startled her back to full wakefulness. For a moment, she considered turning over and just going to sleep, but, with a sigh, she decided against it. Heaving herself out of bed was more of an effort than she felt it should have been. She stood for a moment, rubbing her eyes and trying to smooth her hair, and then, finally, she answered the door.

            Outside, Luna was shifting from foot to foot. She looked up with a hopeful smile when she saw Hermione. “Good evening!” she said brightly, and Hermione had to smile back. It was almost unsettling, how warm and wonderful everything seemed when Luna was around. Something about her just lit up whatever room she was in. “I wondered if you wanted to go through some more of the books together.”

            If it had been anyone else, Hermione would have said that she really ought to get some sleep instead, but her mind weighed the thought of an extra hour of sleep versus an extra hour of Luna, and Luna came out miles ahead almost instantly. “I’d—I’d like that,” she replied. “Do come in.”

            Luna had been in Hermione’s small quarters before, though they usually spent most of their time together in the teachers’ lounge, but tonight she hovered as Hermione slowly got out the books she’d been planning to look over, and Hermione realized that she had left several stacks of ungraded papers obscuring every seat in the room. She laughed and patted the bed next to her. “I’m sorry, I honestly meant to clear this place up a bit yesterday,” she told Luna. “I’ve just been dreadfully tired lately.”

            “Oh—that’s fine.” Strangely, Luna was almost stammering. “Er, are you sure?”

            Hermione glanced back at her to see that both of Luna’s cheeks were flushed, and her hands were twined rather nervously behind her back. “Yes, of course,” she answered, a little blankly. “Why would I mind?”

            Luna blinked rapidly and smiled widely. “Oh, no reason,” she said. “Just, you know, sometimes one’s—one’s robe can have grab—grabknacks without one knowing about it, and I wouldn’t want you to get—itchy.”

            Hermione raised an eyebrow as Luna moved jerkily closer. “I believe you made that up,” she said slowly.

            “I did not,” Luna responded immediately. “I’d never—just make something up.” Her cheeks had definitely turned bright red. “It would be—” she waved a hand, “—unethical for an expert in unusual creatures to simply make something up off the top of her head.” She looked to the side, then sighed. “Although perhaps you’re right that I don’t—exactly—believe that grabknacks exist. Their provenance was disputed as far back as the seventeenth century, and, well, by now, even people who are more open-minded about magical creatures—don’t really—think there’s much evidence…”

            “Are you all right?” Hermione asked sleepily. “I really don’t mind you sitting on my bed. I don’t mind most people sitting on my bed, really, but I especially wouldn’t mind you doing it.”

            “Especially me?” Luna echoed. “Then I won’t refuse, but, um…” She sat gingerly on the side of the bed, then sighed. “’Mione,” she said in a small voice. “I know people think I’m odd. Well, I mean. I _am_ odd.”

            She looked suddenly sad and small and almost drooping as she sat on Hermione’s bed, her hands bunching together in the robe above her knees.

            “Yes,” Hermione agreed, sliding over to her and wondering whether she needed to be comforting. She had never been exactly good at ‘comforting.’ When Ron or Harry had problems, she was far better at offering solutions than comfort, but she was aware that sometimes people didn’t actually need their problems _fixed_ , per se. “I mean, I suppose you’re odd, but your friends don’t mind. We like oddity. I like oddity.”

            “When I was nineteen, I kissed one of my friends, and she definitely didn’t like it,” Luna said abruptly. “You see, I thought she might like it, because I thought she might like me like that, but she didn’t. I’m not very good at knowing if someone would like me to kiss them. And it gets awkward, and people think I’m odd. Which I don’t normally mind at all, but when people don’t want to be around me because I’m odd, I sometimes get sad. Especially if they’re people I like very much.”

            Hermione stared at her, feeling her own cheeks heat just a little. She hadn’t spent much time considering romantic situations since the one with Ron imploded so horribly, and she hadn’t dwelled on the fact that the signals she and Luna had been sending each other were possibly a little less than platonic. But there had been a good deal of touching and hugging—more than Hermione was used to, or generally comfortable with, even with close friends. And the way she’d found herself looking at Luna at odd moments, even the first time she’d seen her this year, in the loo at that awful party. As if she didn’t want to look away.

            “Luna,” she said. “Erm, do you want to kiss me?”

            Luna turned to her, and Hermione was a little concerned to see that there were tears welling up her eyes. “Well, yes,” she admitted. “I _want_ to. But I don’t want you not to want to be around me anymore.”

            “I, er,” said Hermione. She slid a hand to the side and touched the top of Luna’s hand, feeling the tight tension riding in the top of her friend’s knuckles. “Actually, I—I think I’d like to kiss you, too.”

            “You would? Really?”

            Suddenly feeling strangely shy, Hermione forced herself to nod.

            “Oh,” Luna said, smiling. “That’s very nice.” She blinked once, and a tear rolled out of her eye and down her nose. She reached up and brushed it away. “Oh, dear,” she said. “That’s awfully silly that my eyes are still doing this, then.”

            Taking a deep breath, Hermione awkwardly moved one hand up and cupped Luna’s cheek. “I honestly don’t mind,” she breathed, and she pushed the golden strands of Luna’s hair back, leaned forward, and brushed her lips against Luna’s. Before she could pull back, Luna’s hand was in her hair, and Luna was kissing her back as well, sighing into her mouth. It felt wonderful.

            Luna’s hand turned over beneath hers and laced their fingers together. Breathlessly, insistently, she kissed the corner of Hermione’s mouth. “I like this,” she said. “I like this quite a bit.”

            “Me, too,” Hermione admitted. The back of her head felt odd, though, the tiredness that she’d almost forgotten coming back with force. “Tired, though,” she mumbled. “I think I need to sleep.”

            “Oh—I’m sorry—I’ll leave you to sleep.”

            Hermione smiled hazily through the veil of sleepiness. “No, no,” she protested. “Why don’t you stay?” She still hadn’t managed to change out of her robes, had she? Oh well.

            “Are you sure? I mean—the grabknacks—”

            Giggling, still desperately sleepy, Hermione grabbed Luna’s sleeve. “Definitely sure. Don’t mind being itchy anyway.” She pulled her friend down onto the bed, curling against her immediately. The last thing she heard before the darkness claimed her was Luna’s soft, happy sigh.


	10. Steelclad Serpent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a plan is concocted, and Draco and Harry find themselves in an awkward situation.

            “I still don’t like him,” Ron grumbled. He, Harry, and Draco were clambering over a particularly rough set of scattered stones as they tried to make their way up the tor that Draco had identified as their next most likely location.

            “Oh, shut up, Ron,” Harry said tiredly. “You don’t have to.”

            “People don’t just change.”

            “ _You’re_ trying to.”

            Ron gave a growl at that, but subsided. He had at least managed not to be rude to Draco’s face over the past few days, which Harry considered to be a small miracle. They didn’t really have the breath to be arguing anyway. Harry would rather have done the search from a broom, but Draco pointed out it was too easy to miss things that way, so here they were. Harry had discovered he was missing Hermione badly. Though she and Ron sniped at one another, at least he didn’t feel as if they were actually going to kill each other if someone misstepped. Keeping an eye on Ron and Draco was exhausting, though, Harry had to admit, Draco had actually been politer than Ron, if distant.

            Still, it was discouraging. Harry thought he and Draco had finally been getting used to one another, like they might actually be able to become something more than casual colleagues, and then Ron had to show up and fuck everything up. Even if he had been trying to be concerned, it was not a variety of concern Harry had a great deal of desire to deal with right now. And scrambling all over the country didn’t leave him much time to do anything other than mentally complain about it, either.

            In frustration, he started climbing faster, and managed to outstrip both Draco and Ron in getting to the top of the tor. Breathing hard, he pulled himself over the top and paused to catch his breath, then found himself shivering. Up here, the wind was suddenly bone-chilling, and there was a strange dimness in the air he hadn’t been expecting. Harry felt his heartrate speed up—this might be it, finally.

            He pulled his wand out of his robes as a precaution and scanned the landscape. Apart from the chilly feeling in the air, at first glance there was nothing terrible out of place, just a circle of uneven, rocky ground covered in moss. Still, the chill in the air and the way the back of his neck prickled told him that there might be something more here than met the air. “ _Ostendi carmeni—_ ” he began, starting to incant a spell to reveal active charms on the location.

            There was a loud whooshing sound, and he felt something that seemed cold and hot at the same time flare up in front of him, but before anything else could happen, Draco was there, tackling him to the ground. His wand was out as well, but Harry couldn’t hear if he was saying anything over the sudden howling roar and icy chill. For a moment, it was like being caught in an earthquake, the world rocking and shaking around them. Draco grunted in pain, and Harry shut his eyes, trying to reorient himself.

            He might have passed out for a minute, he wasn’t sure. What seemed like a moment later, he was coughing out a lungful of dust, and Draco was groaning next to him while Ron shouted his name. “Shit, Harry, are you all right, mate?”

            His first attempt at a response was unintelligible due to more coughing, and he waved a hand a Ron, who was hovering frantically and apparently trying to decide whether to slap him on the back. “I’m okay,” he managed, on his second attempt at vocalizing. “How’s Draco?”

            “What the fuck happened?” Ron blurted out, kneeling beside them, and hesitantly turning to Draco, who, at this point, was swearing a blue streak. Harry relaxed slightly because if Draco was capable of the creativity required for some of the obscenities he was letting out, he wasn’t dying.

            “I don’t know exactly,” he said. “There was a spell geared to go off when I tried to use the revelatory incantation. Seemed like dark magic, but I didn’t recognize it.”

            Draco coughed, sitting up. “Damn it, Potter,” he said heavily. “Weren’t you the one who was an Auror?”           

            Since this was one of the things Harry had already been thinking frustratedly, he groaned, and put a hand to his face. “Yeah, I just didn’t recognize that spell at all.”

            “I’ve never seen it either,” Ron pointed out. “The place felt off, but there’s none of the obvious tells you’d expect from this kind of thing.”

            “Then I suppose it’s lucky my father thought it necessary to drill me in medieval and pre-medieval curses,” Draco drawled. “I should think that one was from as far back as Merlin’s era or even earlier.” He winced, trying to move, and hissed in pain.

            “Luna didn’t tell us about anything like this,” Harry frowned. “D’you think we stumbled across _another_ dark magic site?”

            Draco shook his head. “Look there,” he said. “Beneath the moss. The stones are broken, and in the center, the earth is churned up as if something was buried there. No, I think Luna just got lucky.”

            “She said she found the remains of a befuddlement charm, I think,” Harry pointed out. “Surely her snooping around to find that out should’ve triggered this?”

            “Old magic is unreliable,” Draco returned, wincing again. “Old enough and the spell might have been unraveling, or maybe she just casts her spells oddly enough it didn’t recognize her. Old spells sometimes don’t recognize newer ones as well as they ought to, with the way magic evolves.” He shrugged. “Ah, fuck, I should _not_ have done that.”

            Staring at the drawn, pale face before him, Harry was abruptly concerned again. “Look, we can mark this spot pretty easily,” he said. “We should head back now and make sure you’re okay.”

            “I’m fine,” Draco snapped, but when he tried to get up, he yelped in pain again.

            “You’re not.” Harry stood first, putting out a hand to help his friend to his feet. “We can afford to wait another day. You’re injured, we need to deal with it, and we need to make sure the curse won’t have lingering effects.”

            Draco took the hand, but made a face. “As long as you promise not to send me to St. Mungo’s.”

            “We’ll take care of it ourselves. Ron and I’ve plenty of practice taking care of this sort of thing. Right, Ron?”

            “What? Oh, yeah, sure, mate.” To Harry’s surprise, Ron gave a bemused smile. “Yeah. We can take care of it. Um. Draco.” The sound of Ron calling him ‘Draco’ instead of ‘Malfoy’ made Harry’s eyebrows rise sharply, but he decided not to make a big deal out of it.           

            After they’d managed to get Draco back on his feet, they had to mark the location, which they did on their map, Harry not being too eager to try any other magic nearby in case of setting off any other age-old curses. Finally, they started limping back the way they had come.

            It took them twice as long to make their way back to the bed-and-breakfast as it had taken them to walk out in the first place. Draco was able to walk, but he could do so only painfully and slowly, and was reduced to muttering creative obscenities nonstop within the first ten minutes.

            Once they’d finally made it back, Draco sat down on the bed, yanked off his singed robes, and started to pull off the shirt he wore beneath, but he stopped with a hiss of pain. “Damn,” he managed. “I think it’s stuck.”

            There was a long pause, and then Harry realized Ron was shifting from foot to foot and looking at the two of them. “I’ll help?” Harry managed, in a questioning sort of voice. “We should be able to just disintegrate it or something. I didn’t realize you’d been—did it burn you?”

            There was another awkward silence, finally broken by Draco, who said irritably, “Stop looking at me like that. I’m not in danger, I’m just in pain. I need to get my fucking shirt off and put some ointment on it. If neither of you wants to help with that, then get out and let me do it myself.”

            Something spiked through Harry, and, for a moment, he almost felt a sense of vertigo. He should just take Ron and go, let Draco have a little privacy. But Draco looked both angry and lonely, and Harry felt abruptly guilty and—something else. There was another something boiling up in his stomach, and he didn’t have time to figure it out right now. “I’ll help,” he said, after a moment. “Ron, can you go and see about getting us dinner or something?”

            Ron frowned, looking as if he was about to object, and then sighed and nodded. “Yeah, sure, mate.” He paused at the door, hovering, and then blurted, “Thanks, Draco,” before leaving quickly.

            Taking a deep breath, Harry turned back to Draco. “Right, let’s get a look at your back,” he said.

            The expression on Draco’s face was—odd. Stone-faced, almost belligerent, he seemed to be glaring at Harry, but when Harry got closer, he realized that his friend was actually trembling slightly.   “Right,” Harry said again. “Hold still, don’t want to jinx you by accident.” He took out his wand and seated himself gingerly on the bed beside Draco. “ _Evanesco_ ,” he murmured, carefully tucking his wand beneath Draco’s collar, where it should have little chance of vanishing anything unfortunate. Normally, the Vanishing Spell was instantaneous, but for some odd reason, the shirt seemed to fade for a moment instead of just blinking out of existence. “Let me see your back.”

            Draco slid around on the bed. “It stings a bit, but I’ve had worse,” he said, in a flat tone of voice that told Harry not to inquire further. Harry peered at the back that was presented to him. At first glance, it looked bruised, but something about the darkening coloration was off, and he frowned. Definitely wouldn’t do to just leave this injury alone.

            “You said you had an ointment, right?”

            Nodding stiffly, Draco started to lean over to where he’d left his pack, but he stopped with a curse. “Can you get it?”

            “Yeah, of course. Are you sure that’s all you’re going to need?”

            “I’ve had a lot of exposure to ancient dark magic,” Draco replied. “Yes. I will be fine, but I would rather you help me with the healing ointment than dither over whether I will need anything extra.”

            “Sorry.” Harry felt his ears heating up as he ducked down to snag the pack and started rifling through it.

            “It’s in the purple bottle,” Draco informed him, just as he found a number of potions that he would otherwise have had no way to identify. He grabbed the purple bottle and let the pack drop to the bed as he turned back to Draco.

            He hadn’t realized that Draco was so skinny. Robes weren’t exactly a revealing kind of outfit; like this, in just his trousers and nothing else, Draco’s ribs and knobby spine were clearly visible, and his shoulder blades were pointier than Harry might have liked. Awkwardly, Harry popped the seal on the purple bottle with a quick, silent spell, and let the fluid inside spill out across his hand. It was clear, with a faint pink tinge, a vaguely floral scent he couldn’t quite place, and it made his fingers tingle ever-so-slightly.

            Draco shivered as Harry carefully began to rub the ointment into his skin, and Harry tried to be gentler. The ugly dark color faded into a bruised yellow-green where the ointment had touched, but the tension in Draco’s back hadn’t eased; if anything, it had gotten worse at Harry’s hesitant ministrations. “Is it helping?” he asked.

            There was a moment of silence, and then a sudden intake of breath. “Oh—yeah, thanks,” Draco said, almost vacantly, and he turned to Harry with an expression that it took Harry’s brain several seconds to parse as an attempt at a smile.

            “You don’t look like it’s helping.”

“I don’t like feeling vulnerable,” Draco snapped. “Look, Potter, I can take it from here, all right? I’ll just bandage it up, the ointment will work, and I’ll be fine in twelve to seventy-two hours, depending.”

            There was still something here Harry wasn’t getting. It was that same weird distance that always seemed to grow up between him and Draco whenever they were getting—well, _close_. “I can bandage it up,” he offered. “It’s probably easier for me. Look, if there’s something else wrong—I mean, you know I’m absolute rubbish at the feelings thing, but I’d like to help. We’re friends?” He hadn’t intended the last to be a question, but it seemed to have come out that way anyway.

            Draco took a long, deep breath. “Merlin, Harry, I—”

            “Just tell me, I can’t help if I don’t know what’s wrong.” Ten years ago, if anyone’d told him he’d be saying this to Draco Malfoy—to a half-naked Draco Malfoy, some small part of his brain noted, oddly gleeful—he’d have laughed in their face. He hesitated a moment, then put a shaky hand on Draco’s shoulder.

            “Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Draco twisted round on the bed, and his hand came up. For a moment, Harry thought he was about to be punched, and then Draco grabbed the back of his head, pulled him forward, and kissed him soundly on the lips.

            Harry made a strangled noise, as a number of things abruptly made sense to him, and then he leaned into the kiss. Things were just starting to get interesting when Draco pulled back sharply and stared at him. “Sorry, Potter,” he said stiffly.

            “Sorry?” Harry echoed, in confusion, and one of Draco’s eyebrows climbed into his hair.

            “Unless I—shouldn’t be?” he asked cautiously.

            Flushing, Harry’s eyes flickered down across Draco’s naked upper torso. “Yeah, let’s go with that one,” he said, and pinned Draco to the bed.

~

            Frowning, Ral watched as the ink traced another blurry blue line on the parchment by itself, as it paused and a blot formed. “Now she’s somewhere on the fourth floor,” he sighed in exasperation. “I don’t get it.” With Teysa’s apparently encyclopedic knowledge of spells to help them, he and Chandra had set up a tracing spell on Emmara that ought to be all but imperceptible. So far, she certainly hadn’t given any indication that she knew they’d cast it, at least, but the results were—peculiar.

            For the past few days, every evening, she’d left the common room at about the same time and gone somewhere completely innocuous, as far as they could tell. Every day, Ral, Teysa, and Chandra had waited until she’d left, gone to where the spell had indicated, and found themselves wandering around in the middle of an empty corridor somewhere in the middle of the castle. It didn’t make any sense.

            “We must be missing something.” Teysa leaned over his shoulder and stared at the dot. “Either she’s disrupting our spell, or she’s somehow hiding wherever it is she’s actually going.”

            “This needs to stop taking so long,” Ral growled. “The longer it takes, the more Jace—”

            “And Nissa and Elspeth still aren’t waking up,” Chandra put in. “You’re right, we need to speed things up somehow.”

            “We need help,” Ral said grimly. “We need something she won’t expect. Something she can’t guard against.”

            “But we don’t know anything about her motivations,” Teysa objected. “How can we predict what she will and won’t expect? She’s in the position of power here.”

            Ral threw himself backward in his chair so hard that he nearly overturned it. “I know,” he groaned. “God, this is almost as bad as what happened first year! Actually, it might be worse, at least Mirko wasn’t really doing it on purpose.”

            “Who’s Mirko?” Teysa asked.

            “Mirko is a boggart,” Ral answered automatically. “They live in the Forbidden Forest, but they're usually around for things like Halloween. Wasn’t Narset going to do an independent study on communicating with them?” He looked at Chandra.

            “I think she did some last year, but she’s been really busy this year.”

            “ _Talking_ to a _boggart_?” Teysa sounded incredulous. “A mindless fear spirit? How?”

            Ral waved a hand. “Mirko, uh, isn’t really mindless. It turns out if a boggart is old enough, they can get pretty smart, and if you happen to let them share a mind with a powerful _legilimens_ , they can become almost human.”

            “A boggart. A _smart_ boggart.” Teysa smiled suddenly. “I can’t imagine _anyone_ would expect that.”

            Tilting his head to one side, Ral considered this. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “Yeah, I think you’re right. They’re pretty good at hiding themself, too, so they could just follow her—all we need is a way to _tell_ them all this.”

            “I can ask Narset,” Chandra offered. “Didn’t she say something about using a pensieve?”

            “Yeah.” Ral tapped his quill against his chin. “It makes sense, and I think it’s what Professor Granger did back in first year.”

            “Then we just have to get hold of a pensieve somehow,” Teysa frowned.

            “Professor Potter has one, he used it for Jace’s lessons sometimes.” Ral kicked at the desk. “But he’s not _here_ , and he wouldn’t listen if we asked to borrow it anyway.”

            “Who said anything about asking?” Chandra grinned. “No one would expect us to break into his rooms, so it’ll be easy.”

            “That’s certainly one way of looking at it.” Teysa’s eyebrows went up, but she didn’t sound terribly perturbed.

            “Right,” said Ral, pleased to have a plan that might actually end in them being able to save Jace from whatever-the-fuck Emmara was doing to him. “Chandra can get the pensieve, and I’ll get Mirko. They like me.”

            “And I’ll stay here and keep an eye on the tracking spell,” Teysa agreed, flashing him a bright smile.

            “We’ve fucking _got_ this!” Chandra chimed in excitedly.

~

            “What the _fuck_?”

            “Ron, it’s not—okay, so it’s exactly what it looks like.” Harry sat up hurriedly and then realized that he might be showing a bit too much skin. Beside him, Draco frantically grabbed for a shirt.

            “Dammit, Weasley, you could have knocked!” he snarled angrily.

            “Sorry I wasn’t expecting my best mate to be fucking a Death Eating poofter!” Ron snarled back, and Harry felt Draco, beside him, go very still.

            “Ron, I don’t want to hear this,” he cut in, and Ron shut his eyes and took an explosively deep breath.

            “Sorry,” he forced out. “I just need—I’m going to go get a drink. I got us some Muggle food for dinner, chow down.” He dropped a paper bag on the bed and backed out of the room, shutting the door behind him. Harry looked awkwardly over at Draco, scratching the back of his head.

            “Sorry, that kind of killed the mood, didn’t it?”

            “No, no, I enjoy it when the tail end of my lovemaking is accompanied by my lover’s friend walking in and reminding me of all the reasons a relationship is impossible,” Draco retorted caustically. He still hadn’t managed to find a shirt—probably, Harry realized, as the endorphins started to clear up, because Harry had vanished the one he’d been wearing before all this started.

            “What d’you mean?” he asked with a frown. Okay, they hadn’t so much talked about this thing, more just fallen into bed, but he’d assumed if they were both on board with it, it wasn’t just going to be a one night stand. He didn’t _want_ it to be a one night stand.

            “Potter, really? Must I give you a lesson on exactly how impossible it is for the two of us to be—”

            “—friends?” Harry cut in. “Because that seemed pretty fucking impossible a few years ago.”

            “You know that isn’t what I was going to say.” But Draco was starting to look rather nonplussed.

            “I just think you’re panicking,” Harry shrugged. “Ron came in at a bad time and was a twat. That doesn’t mean he’s right.”

            Apparently giving up on the shirt, Draco sighed and sat back against the pillows. “Look, Potter, have you ever had a boyfriend?”

            Harry blinked at him. “Uh, yeah.”

            “Then you won’t—wait, what?”

            “Oh sorry, did I derail your angstfest? I already had my bisexual awakening, Malfoy. After Ginny and I broke up, I dated a Muggle named Stephen for about a year. Didn’t really work out, mostly because I couldn’t tell him a lot of stuff about my personal life, but it was fine. It ended with less drama than the thing with Ginny, even.”

            “You— _Harry Potter_ , the Boy Who Lived, Savior of the Wizarding World—dated a man—a _Muggle_ man, and it never made the tabloids?”

            “Er, yeah, we were pretty discreet. Besides, no one expects Harry-Potter-the-Boy-Who-Lived-Savior-of-the-Wizarding-World to be dating a Muggle. Maybe we were just lucky.”

            “Well.” Malfoy stared and sat back. “Hm.”

            “I mean,” Harry said, in an effort to be fair. “Muggle culture tends to be more accepting of the whole, y’know, being gay thing. Still not fantastic, mind you, but definitely better.”

            “There is also the slight matter of me being an ex Death-Eater,” Malfoy said cautiously, but the spark of bitter anger seemed to have died away.

            “Yeah, well, it doesn’t bother me—not anymore—and I think that’s pretty much the most important thing,” Harry shrugged. “Don’t you?”

            Though his expression was still guarded, Draco’s body was slowly relaxing. “I suppose that’s a not unreasonable way of looking at it,” he said stiffly.

            “Okay, good then,” Harry said with a smile. “And maybe now would be a good time to eat.” He indicated the bag Ron had left on the bed. “When you dive in front of a curse for your _boyfriend_ you tend to need to eat some food so your body heals up quicker, yeah?”

            A slow flush was building across Draco’s pale face. “I—I suppose so,” he managed, and there was a smile twisting at the corner of his mouth.


	11. Bitterheart Witch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Hermione and Luna find a book, Harry, Ron and Draco travel to France, and Ral, Teysa, and Chandra discover Emmara's secret.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so we begin the part I've been wanting to post forever. Mwahahaha~

            The smell of old books was oddly soporific, as Hermione struggled to keep her eyes open. She felt as if they must have gone through every volume in the Restricted Section by now, but they still hadn’t found anything about sailboats. Not that it could actually be about sailboats, of course, but whatever it was, they still hadn’t found it yet.

            Sighing, she shifted position, and her knuckles brushed against Luna’s. Luna looked up from her position crouched in front of the shelves, smiled brilliantly, and leaned over to brush her lips across Hermione’s cheek. Hermione flushed and looked away, but she was smiling. Squeezing Luna’s hand, she leaned forward, trying to conceal the fact that her throat felt strangely tight.

            Aimlessly, she reached for a large, solid book on the bottom shelf, let it tip forward into her lap, and stared at it. _Saelanunge Gerecednessa_. Old English. It took a moment for Hermione to parse it; although she had taken several classes in it because there were some spells—especially very old spells—that were not Latinate in origin. They tended to be less well known and therefore an excellent trick to have up one’s sleeve. Besides which, she’d been curious.

            _Tales of Binding_.

            “That’s it.” Luna was leaning over her shoulder; her breasts against Hermione’s back were almost inexpressibly soft, and it took Hermione far too long to succeed in parsing what she’d said. She automatically followed Luna’s gaze towards the intricate Celtic knot on the front cover of the book. “What?”

            “Sailboats. I can’t believe it. I mean, I suppose I can see how my brain made the connection, but it’s still rather funny, isn’t it? Do you know what it means?”

            “Tales of Binding,” Hermione supplied. “Wait, you mean this is _the_ book?”

            “Let me see it.” Luna flipped it open, and, unusually cooperatively for a Restricted Section book, it lay quiescent as she turned page after yellowing page. “Yes,” she breathed, after a moment. “Yes, yes— _this_. Here.” Triumphantly, she pointed to an illustration with what looked like a coffee-cup stain in the corner. It was one of those sort of woodcut-esque drawings, with a lot of diagonal lines for shading that made the ring of dark stones stand out darkly from the page. “This is what I found,” Luna said with a shudder.

            Hermione squinted at the crabbed handwriting on the obverse page, trying to make it out. Poor handwriting and a language she wasn’t used to reading. “This is going to take a while to transcribe,” she frowned. “And I need some better lighting.”

            By the flickering torchlight deep in the Reserved Section, she could barely make out the letters.

            “Why don’t we go to the lounge?” Luna suggested. “Once we’ve translated it, we can tell Harry and Draco what they’re looking for.”

            Hermione nodded. “The last I heard, they were still poking around the general area and hadn’t found anything, but it’s been quite some time since they last reported to us.” She frowned. “I hope they’re all right,” she said quietly.

            Luna put a comforting hand on her arm. “I’m sure they are. Harry can be a little scatterbrained at times.” She tipped her head to the side in a smile. Hermione smiled back as she picked up _Tales of Binding_ and got to her feet.

~

            Teysa refused to tell them how she’d gotten into Professor Potter’s office, which made Ral suspect whatever she’d done was probably illegal and therefore fascinating, but either way, she and Ral had gotten back at roughly the same time, and all Ral had had to do was bum around the Forbidden Forest until Mirko showed up. Which hadn’t taken long. He thought the boggart got lonely out there sometimes, and he felt bad that he hadn’t visited them this year, but with everything that was going on with Jace, he just hadn’t felt up to it.

            Without a way to talk to them—without Jace, he admitted grudgingly—it was harder to know if Mirko would understand what he wanted. There was just the chill of their breath and the sense of uneasiness they always brought. The blurred grey figure rising from the mist shimmered and took on Jace’s form—something Mirko was always pretty comfortable with, ever since their first year—and Ral had to suppress a sudden stabbing pain in his throat.

            Mirko’s eyes, blank and blue and just too large for the real Jace, stared implacably at Ral for a long moment, and then they held out one pale, misty hand in the direction of Hogwarts. _Let’s go_ , they seemed to be saying. The journey back was short but silent, awkward because Ral didn’t think he’d ever been alone with Mirko before.

            Talking to them via the pensieve instead of directly through Jace’s mind was more difficult, and made Ral think vaguely of the _His Dark Materials_ trilogy. The way disjointed images and symbols bubbled to the surface for interpretation was similar to the way he’d always imagined Lyra reading the alethiometer. Except that none of the three of them had an innate talent for it, because the person who had the innate talent for talking to Mirko was the person they were trying to rescue.

            Eventually, though, Mirko had nodded, which probably meant they understood what Ral, Teysa, and Chandra were trying to tell them, and faded out into a grayish mist that trickled out the door. Good timing, too, because this was generally around the time that Emmara showed up somewhere vaguely on the fourth floor and then vanished.

        Ral was now sort of trying to focus on homework, and pretty much failing—this essay was going to be incomprehensible even by his usual standards—while Chandra wasn’t bothering to even try, and was, instead, amusing herself by trying to make what looked like fire rings in the air. Teysa, apparently more patient than either of them, was calmly ensconced in a book nearly as large as she was.

        Several minutes later, the grey mist boiled up again from underneath the door and formed into a pillar, which rapidly became a vaguely Jace-esque figure again. It was smiling, which Ral cautiously took to be a good sign. Mirko wasn’t _great_ at human facial expressions, but they usually weren’t totally off either. A smile was probably some kind of positive.

        Mirko floated over to the pensieve, and Teysa, Ral, and Chandra crowded eagerly around it. “Don’t elbow me,” Ral said irritably.

        “Then let me _see_ ,” Chandra responded, but both of them fell silent as the images began to form.

        It was the fourth floor, all right, built in miniature silver in the bowl in front of them. Dim, shadowy figures moved through it, and Ral watched intently for Emmara, though he wasn’t certain he’d be able to recognize her at this level of resolution. Slowly, the picture panned along an empty stretch of wall between two pictures. Instead of continuing, as Ral had expected, it paused. Then the silver bricks of the wall seemed to slide backwards like so many Tetris blocks, revealing a sturdy wooden door with an ornate handle that, for some reason, looked very vaguely familiar.

        “But that door doesn’t exist,” Chandra pointed out, in a puzzled tone of voice. “What’re they trying to tell us?”

        Ral frowned. “It looks familiar,” he said. “But I think you’re right, isn’t there just wall there? Mirko, are you sure this thing is doing what you want it to?”

        The blurred pale face turned slowly from the pensieve and then back to Ral, and the boggart gave a single, deep nod.

        “Maybe you’re wrong?” Teysa suggested. “Perhaps it’s a hidden door—it could be concealed by an illusion, or even something as simple as a tapestry.”

        “I guess…” Ral said doubtfully. That didn’t seem likely, but he supposed it was possible. “We might as well go look for it.”

       “Yeah,” Chandra agreed. “Look, if she’s as powerful as you think she is, maybe she, I don’t know, created a new door or something, and then hid it.”

       Ral considered this. It seemed like you’d have to go to an awful lot of trouble to do something like that without the staff finding out. On second thought, absolutely no one had noticed or believed him about what she’d done to Jace, so maybe it wasn’t so unbelievable after all. “Yeah, let’s go,” he agreed.

      The three of them made their way up silently to the fourth floor corridor. Ral was shaking with suppressed nerves, and every so often, a tiny spark formed on his pinky finger and shot towards the ground. _All I want to do,_ he thought angrily, _is find out what she’s doing and stop her. And maybe get a thank you from Jace. A thank you would be nice._

      Or maybe—maybe he could get Jace to look at him the way he’d looked during the few hours they’d worked together in the lab a week ago, that soft, almost hesitant look and the way Jace’s mouth suddenly turned up into an excited grin, the way his lips—fuck. _I am not in love with my best friend_.

      Whatever. It didn’t matter. He just had to get him back. Help him. That was the only thing that was important right now, find out what Emmara had been doing to him and how they could fix it.

            He barely noticed the stairs going past and was almost surprised when they reached the stretch of wall that Mirko had indicated. Unsurprisingly, it was blank. Ral sighed. Now they had to figure out how to find the door the boggart had showed them—but Mirko was continuing past the wall for some reason. “Uh, hey, Mirko?” Ral said uncertainly. “Wasn’t it here?”

            The blurred Jace-head swiveled a disconcertingly large angle around and nodded. Simultaneously, Mirko raised one backwards hand and beckoned at them. This was weird, but the boggart was still the best lead they had, so, with a shrug, Ral followed them. They got to the end of the passage and turned back. “Seriously, what’re they _doing_?” Chandra hissed as they followed it right back down the corridor again.

            “Be patient,” Teysa said crisply. “Quite a number of spells require repetition.”

            Chandra made a grumbling noise, but subsided. Ral would have liked to complain as well, too nervous and on-edge to want to just keep walking aimlessly back and forth, but he wasn’t going to say anything after Chandra already had.

            Reaching the other end of the hallway and turning around again, they walked back yet again—and then Mirko stopped in front of that same damn patch of wall. Except somehow it wasn’t empty anymore. Ral blinked. Teysa had been right. Instead of the same boring, uniform paneling between two large portraits, there was now a door slotted snugly into the wall, the same door they’d seen in the pensieve, the same door that seemed so oddly familiar to Ral, if he could only place it.

            But this was it. This was the closest they’d been yet. With a sense of mounting triumph, Ral reached out and tried the doorknob. There was a soft creak, and then it swung inward.

~

            Things were awkward again. The previous night, Ron had apologized as stiffly as humanly possible to both of them, staring at something over Harry’s left ear when he did, and curling up in his sleeping bag on the floor with his back pressed against the wall.

            “Oh, for Merlin’s sake,” Draco said loudly. “Weasley, I wouldn’t want your ass if it was the last ass in the bloody universe, all right?”

            Ron went red to his ears and glared, but he eased away from the wall a little. By the following day, he was at least back to making eye contact with Harry, although Harry noticed that he still stayed maybe an arms’ length farther away than he normally did. But if this was his rate of getting okay with the situation, as long as it kept up, it wouldn’t be that bad, Harry supposed. In a month or two, things might even be back to normal again.

            They had waited until the afternoon to go back to the stones they’d found, mostly because Draco was still moving stiffly and a little painfully in the morning, and Harry didn’t want him to strain himself, so he’d contrived to think up a lot of small excuses to keep them around the bedroom until it was relatively late. He wasn’t sure if Draco had tumbled to his game or not; Ron certainly hadn’t and was just getting more and more impatient.

            Now, though, they were heading up the old tor for the second time. There was still a chilly dankness settled across it, at stark odds with what was actually a surprisingly sunny day. “Why don’t you let me do the spells this time, Potter?” Draco suggested acerbically.

            “You can probably call me Harry,” Harry pointed out mildly. “You were certainly yelling it loud enough yesterday.”

            There was a sudden silence, and Harry watched in amusement as both Ron and Draco slowly turned red.

            “Harry then,” Draco said shortly, digging his wand out of his robes. “Either way, I don’t need you setting off another ancient curse and getting us all incinerated or turned into frogs or something equally nasty.”

            His approach was similar to what Harry’s had been on the previous day, except that he threw in one or two charms in what Harry thought was probably Gaelic, but the rapidity of his speech and the harshness of his accent made it difficult to tell. Harry had never had much experience with Gaelic anyways.

            He could still sense the darkness in the air, and the sensation actually grew worse as Draco carefully moved from spell to spell, until finally, he paused with a sigh. “Of course,” he said.

            “What is it?” Ron asked.

            “The spell Harry tripped yesterday seems to have been the last protection round this place. Now there are just traces.”

            Taking out his wand, Harry quickly performed his own spell, the spell that had ended so disastrously on the previous day. “You’re right,” he said. “Just traces of dark magic. But some of it’s recent—well, relatively recent.” And he thought he recognized the signature, too, though it would have to be a good decade old or so.

            “Some is very old, though.” Draco frowned. “There’s something familiar about it.”

            “I think some of the newer stuff may have been Bellatrix Lestrange,” Harry said, and Draco nodded slowly.

            “It’s her style, all right. A large amount of power pumped through to break an ancient spell. Very careless. And I think at least one person died here then, though I can’t be certain. Not on land with a dark spell this old on it—it’s soaked into the bones of the place.”

            Frowning, Draco chewed on his knuckle. “So, suppose this place was raided by Voldemort’s lackeys during the war. The spell was broken, and something was taken out of the earth—perhaps an artifact?”

            “They could have been doing so many things,” Harry shrugged. “I’m sure there are still Death-Eaters walking around free.”

            Draco gave him a sardonic smile. “Some people would say there was one right here.”

            He glanced in Ron’s direction, but Ron didn’t exactly rise to the bait. “So you don’t know what it was, then, mate?”

            “I don’t know what it was, but if you just give me a minute—I could swear I’ve seen something like this before. Ugh, it’s a pity we don’t have a pensieve.”

            “We could go back to Hogwarts,” Harry pointed out.

            “No—I don’t think it’s actually necessary.” Draco frowned, then snapped his fingers. “I’ve got it. Father once took me to one of Voldemort’s boltholes in France—”

            “Oh, _those_.” Harry blew out an explosive breath. In the years following the war, they’d discovered that, although most of Voldemort’s followers were British, he had several strongholds in other countries; the most numerous, of course, being directly across the Channel.

            “They had someone imprisoned there,” Draco said slowly. “She was under heavy guard, and I wasn’t allowed to get very close. All Father said was that she had the potential to be a powerful ally if she could be convinced to aid us.”

            “I take it she wasn’t convinced,” Harry said dryly, “or we’d know a bit more about what was going on right now. Maybe we’d better look into this French bolthole, then.”

            “I’d love to, but I don’t exactly have my passport on me,” Draco responded, with a frustrated sigh.

            “Well, then,” Ron broke in. “Good thing you’ve got a practicing Auror with you, isn’t it?” He gave them a grim smile as they turned to him. “This is definitely enough proof to constitute at least a minor emergency. I can get us in through the international floo network.”

~

            _The Sleeper in Stone,_ Hermione read slowly, paying little attention to the cup of tea at her elbow, and just a bit more to Luna’s hand, brushing lightly against her knuckles. Even tucked into a large number of blankets in her own room, curled up against her new girlfriend, and with a steaming cup of tea that smelled lovely, she was shivering, tired, and apprehensive. And _Tales of Binding_ wasn’t exactly easy reading material. Hermione’s Gaelic was rusty, and the handwriting was scrawled and hasty, which, combined with a relatively odd word-choice and the author’s evident _desire_ to be poetic but lack of particular _talent_ , made it really difficult going.

            _Upon then through darkness blinding spake Merlin_ —she had to be translating some of that wrong, but never mind, Hermione thought with a shake of her head.

            _You viper, you whom I held to my breast_

_Who has poisoned my veins in my sleep_

_A rose with too-hidden thorn_

_Now shall you too sleep._

_Too long your honeyed words have lulled me_

_The stinking rot of your false love_

_Clouding my mind with a miasma._

_Kill you I cannot, but sleep you shall._

“Are you sure it’s ‘miasma’?” Luna ventured. “Or, well, maybe you’re right, but what do you think the author means by that?”

            Hermione frowned at the page. “It looks like he’s talking about a love potion,” she pointed out. “Smell’s a pretty good indicator, and that would definitely cloud your thoughts. A love potion that affected Merlin himself would have to be pretty strong, though.”

            “Well, there are all those stories about Nimue,” Luna said dreamily. “My da used to read me some of them when I was little.”

            “Most wizards don’t think they have much truth to them.” Hermione shifted, frowning. “But then, I suppose we don’t know how accurate this story is either.”

            Luna ran her fingers across the image of the standing stones opposite to the text. “This is what I saw, though,” she murmured. “The earth was churned up, but the ring of stones was just the same.”

            “Hmmm.” It was still difficult to think beneath the haze of exhaustion—Hermione wondered if she was getting sick. But something was niggling at her. “Did they _have_ love potions in Merlin’s time?” There had been charms, she was sure of that. But, frustratingly—and she ought to _know_ this, she was teaching History of Magic, for Merlin’s sake—she couldn’t quite put her finger on the appropriate range of dates for the first love potions.

            “ _Accio Weatherby_ ,” she murmured, summoning his treatise, _Mind-altering Magic Through the Ages_. It was a good reference volume that wasn’t so in-depth she thought she’d have trouble finding what she needed. “Hmmm. It looks as if they did. Liliana Vess is older than I thought she was.”

            “Liliana Vess?”

            “Supposedly the inventor of the first love potion. Not much is known about her other than old stories. We don’t even really have reliable dates for her. She could have overlapped Merlin; she could also have been a few centuries earlier.” Hermione shook her head. There was simply no reason that the history of this era should be so sporadic. Perhaps everyone had been busy hiding from Muggles, she thought exasperatedly, although that really didn’t explain much. Well, history of magic wasn’t _really_ her area of expertise; it was just where she was most needed as a teacher.

            The fire flared green, startling Hermione out of her reverie.

            “Hermione.” Harry’s head looked grim. “We’ve got a situation.”

            “You found the stones?”

            “Oh, yeah, we found them. Draco followed the dark magic trace there and brought us to France—by the way, that’s why I didn’t just floo back entirely, we’re still here—and to one of Voldemort’s old hideaways. He says there was someone kept here during the war, someone Voldemort was hoping to convince to fight on his side.”

            Hermione’s stomach was suddenly queasy. “Not someone we’d have wanted fighting on his side, I take it?”

            “No,” Harry said shortly. “Whoever she is, she’s a bloody dark witch. And we found the spot—took us long enough, there was an absolute maze of befuddlement charms around it. We finally managed to track down one of the locals—a squib—who remembered a tour group that came through for a few days.  There was a boy in a blue cloak with them, and he thinks the boy went into the ruins and came out with another young woman.”

            “Oh no,” Hermione whispered.

~

            The room Ral, Teysa, and Chandra had entered looked like an alchemical laboratory, complete with several heavy oaken cabinets, and a huge iron cauldron that looked as if it was probably big enough to fit a person. Teysa had immediately limped over to it and looked inside before pronouncing that it was empty, somewhat to Ral’s relief. Something about the hulking sides and the weird, knotted designs on its side turned his stomach. In fact, the whole room felt— _dark_. There was a strange dimness hanging over everything.

            “Somebody’s been doing dark magic in here,” Teysa said, sounding slightly uneasy.

            “How do you know?” Ral asked, even though the hair was prickling at the back of his neck.

            “I know what it feels like.” Teysa pursed her lips together, one hand clenching in the robes over her injured leg. “Let’s check around for any clues in the cabinets and then leave. I’d rather not stay here any longer than I have to.”

            The first cabinet wouldn’t open, not even to _alohomora_. Teysa warned them away from the second one. “We can come back later, but I want to have a good anti-curse book right at hand before we try anything with that.” She jabbed a finger at the complex rune inscribed across the front of the second cabinet. “That could be very nasty if we aren’t very careful.”

            The third cabinet, however, was less carefully sealed. The door shuddered and creaked when Ral cast the unlocking charm on it, though it didn’t quite open.

            “The hinges,” Teysa said suddenly, narrowing her eyes. “They’re not properly reinforced. We can probably just destroy them, if we can—”

            “ _Incendio_.” A cylinder of flame blossomed from the end of Chandra’s wand, and Ral felt the heat of it on his arm as it went past. The hinges tried to maintain cohesion, but they were old and poorly made, and apparently Chandra’s fire was _very_ hot.

            “Nice,” Ral said appreciatively as the metal glowed red, then white, and then finally melted, trickling down the side of the apparently magically-protected wood. That probably didn’t make sense, and somewhere in a side corner of his brain, Ral made a note to look more carefully into fire protection spells and how they interacted with normal critical points. Were there magical phase transitions in addition to the normal ones?

            And then the front of the cabinet was sagging off, and all thoughts of science were forgotten, because—“Oh my god. _Kallist_.”

            What had she _done_ to him? The little cloud hung in the center of the ruined cabinet, nothing more than a puff of eerily unmoving grey mist. Hands shaking, Ral reached into the cabinet and gently prodded the cloud. It felt cold and oddly dry to the touch; his finger passed through it without any noticeable effect. “Kallist, mate, c’mon,” he murmured. “Can you hear me?”

            No response. Sickness churned in Ral’s stomach, the way it had last summer when Niv had gotten into Ral’s dad’s chocolate stash. But he’d been okay, they’d taken him to the vet—there weren’t any vets for clouds, Ral thought stupidly. Carefully, he got out his wand and looked from it to Kallist. Would conjuring a spark help?

            A cold presence at his elbow drew his attention back to Mirko, who was staring into the cabinet as well. Maybe he’d know what to do—they were both amortals, after all, so he’d have a better chance of knowing something useful than Ral would. Or maybe—he didn’t want to get one of the professors, but Tamiyo at least should have a better grasp than Ral himself did. Chewing on his lip, he tried to decide if it made more sense to leave for now and come back, or to stay and try to solve it themselves. He hated to ask for help, and he hated the idea of leaving—they might not be able to find it again easily—but Kallist was too important to gamble the wrong way on. So was Jace.

            “Hey, Teysa—” She’d have a better feel for this than Chandra would, probably.

            “ _Riddikulus!_ ” There was a sudden, sharp crack, and Mirko gave a sudden croaking, screaming cry. As Ral whirled with his wand in his hand, the boggart exploded into a handful of wisps of grey mist, which dissipated into the surrounding air. Maybe it was the sudden dull thump of pain at the sight of his friend imploding, but whatever it was, when he tried to bring his wand to bear, he was just a moment too late to avoid it when the second voice shouted, “ _Expelliarmus_!”

            Ral’s wand went flying out of his hand amid an explosion of sparks. He twisted around, trying to recover it, but it clattered to the floor halfway across the room.

            “ _Incendi_ —” Chandra’s voice was arrested in the middle of the spell she was trying to cast, and Ral turned around and then dove to the side to avoid a red bolt as someone yelled, “ _Stupefy!_ ”

            He hit the ground hard and rolled, scrambling to the other side of the cabinet he’d found Kallist in. His wand was only a few feet away from him, if he could just—

            A foot came down on top of it, and Ral found himself staring at Jace as the latter bent and retrieved his wand.

            “Jace, what the fuck are you doing?”

            His friend stared at him and seemed to look right through him, a wide, dizzy smile plastered across his face. He raised his wand. “Don’t move,” he said. “Emmara?”

            She came around the side of the cabinet, barely even a hair out of place.

            “Well, whatever shall we do with you, hm, Ral Zarek?” The stupid-sounding French accent was gone, replaced by a different lilt that sounded almost like Elspeth’s. Not quite. “I’m very tired of you causing me this much trouble all the time.”

            “Jace,” Ral said steadily, ignoring her. “Give me back my wand.”

            The blue eyes blinked very slowly. “I don’t think I should,” Jace said finally, his voice sounding as if it was drenched in molasses. Emmara shot him an irritated look.

            “Oh, be quiet, Jace,” she said, and Jace shut his mouth immediately. “That’s a darling boy,” she continued, and he smiled dreamily.

            “What did you do to him?” Ral snarled, starting forward. Fuck it, he didn’t need a wand, he’d punch that smug grin right off her face. He felt something sizzling in the air around his fist, forming a tight corona that set the hair on the back of his wrist rising—

            Emmara snarled something in a language he didn’t recognize, and something hit Ral very hard in the region of his chest. He doubled over, gasping, but his lungs couldn’t seem to get any air.

            “You’re just aching for a lesson, aren’t you, boy?” Something sharp beneath his chin forced his head up.

            “Jace—won’t let you—do anything to me,” Ral forced out through painfully constricted lungs.

            “Your precious Jace is so full of _Amortentia_ that his heart would give out if he had another drop,” Emmara responded, her eyes glittering darkly. “He won’t do a damn thing for you. And when it’s over, I’ll tell him to erase the memory, so he doesn’t have to dream of you screaming until your lungs run out of air.”

            “You fucking _bitch_ —” Tingling surged up his arm, and he could feel it trying to break loose, but before it could, the wand jerked up beneath his throat.

            “ _Crucio_.”


	12. Reforge the Soul

            Emmara was the most beautiful thing Jace had ever seen in his life. Her hair fluttered slightly, glowing in the flickering light of the active spell. Her bright blue eyes were like twin jewels, and her smile— _why is she smiling like that_?—was a sweet, full grin, lips drawn back to display her teeth. _Someone’s screaming. Someone’s hurt_.

            She’d told him he could help her. If he helped her, she’d let him stay by her side forever, and that was the only thing he wanted. Just to help her and to be allowed to hold her and look at her lovely form, the curve of her hips and breasts, the tightness of her hand holding her wand. _They’re still screaming_. The voice sounded familiar.

            _Something’s wrong_. Jace’s head hurt. Emmara had said to wait patiently and help, but his head hurt. Flashes of pain like little lightning bolts kept jabbing into his skull. _He’s hurt. Don’t hurt him. Stop_. Wincing, Jace put a hand to his head. Emmara had told him not to worry. So he shouldn’t worry. There wasn’t anything to worry about. _Yes, there is, you idiot! That’s Ral! Ral’s hurt!_

Of course it was Ral. He’d been in Ral’s head more than he’d been in anyone else’s. He’d recognize Ral’s thoughts anywhere. _Jace won’t let you do anything to me._ His mind pulled the statement, and somewhere inside he realized that it had been a long, long moment since it had been spoken. _Ral is screaming._

            Emmara’s wand was pointed at Ral. Ral was screaming. There was another thought in there, the middle thought, the second out of three thoughts in the logical progression, and it wasn’t coming. Jace couldn’t make it happen. He couldn’t think it. That wasn’t right. That was—oh Merlin—that was definitely not right.

            He wanted to be calm—he was calm—but, Jace was suddenly convinced, he _shouldn’t_ be calm. But he could use that. Since he was calm, he could easily focus inwards— _he’s screaming Ral’s screaming oh god oh Ral oh no—_ and look at his mental walls. No, he thought calmly, surveying them, he definitely should not be calm. There were holes everywhere—little ones, _tiny ones_ , but something pink was oozing or wafting through each and every single one, like a huge spiderweb crisscrossing through his mind.

            All right. He needed to get rid of that. It shouldn’t be too difficult now that he knew it was there, because thankfully Professor Potter had drilled him in all sorts of tricks for dealing with mental invasion. And he was so blissfully calm that it was _simple_ to do a quick check, find all of the holes, and simply shutter them closed all at once.

            The pink threads snapped with a soft mental ping. _Emmara is hurting Ral_. There it was. There was the thought. And Jace wasn’t calm at all, not anymore.

            “ _Stupefy_!” The word ripped from his throat before he even knew what spell he was casting. Emmara gasped and staggered forward, her own spell— _the Cruciatus curse_ —snapping as her wand arm fell.

            “Jace, what are you doing?” she panted, somehow still upright and beginning to raise her wand again. “You can’t possibly—”

            _“Stupefy_!” he tried again, but this time, impossibly, she turned it aside with a complex wand movement.

            “You stupid boy!” she snarled. “How did you shake off that much _Amortentia_? Oh, never mind. _Cullah_.”

            The last word coincided with a sudden blue light emanating from the end of her wand. Jace, finding reflexes he hadn’t known he possessed, just barely managed to throw himself out of the way before it caught him. But before she could raise her wand to try again, he had his own up. “ _Legilimens._ ”

~

            _I won’t go back to the earth_. _The cold place the damp the dark the rot worms crawling across flesh I won’t go back and I won’t die._

_Yes, you will._ Her mental walls were strong, but they weren’t strong enough. Not when all Jace could hear were Ral’s screams echoing over and over and over again. One last burst of pain, and then the touch of Ral’s mind was fading. It took him an instant to feel the shape of her thoughts, but it wasn’t so long that he couldn’t react to her next attempt.

            “ _Protego_!” Jace shouted at the same time as Emmara—and that wasn’t her name, of course that wasn’t her name—screamed out another spell. The shield charm reverberated with the impact, and he felt her mind reaching for another spell that would disintegrate it. From somewhere, he found a spell that let him detach the shield charm and briefly cast an invisibility spell. Hidden, he let her focus on disintegrating the shield as he concentrated on deepening the connection between them.

            He winced as the shield went down, because the spell she had used was tailored to follow the spell back to the caster and—dragging the wand movements from her mind by main force, he was just barely able to stop the spellwyrm from getting to him, but he had to drop the invisibility to do so, and he looked up to find Liliana’s eyes locking with his.

            He felt the impulse in her mind, but this time wasn’t quite fast enough to stop it.

            _“Dorchadas_!”

            Jace’s vision went black, and now she thought she’d won, because it didn’t matter what he was doing in there, he couldn’t possibly stop her when he was _blind_ —

            He’d practiced finding other minds a little, mostly with Ral, but the hard part wasn’t really knowing they were there or finding them or getting in—it was staying afloat, staying _him_ amid the sudden sea of memories. _Legilimens_ protected you somehow, and following his blind, instinctive sense didn’t, but Jace didn’t know anything right now about who he was, and all he wanted was to see her _scream and bleed and writhe_

            And it was so _easy_ to find someone else who wanted the _exact same thing_.

            _I’m Teysa yes I’m a squib yes I can still fuck you up_

_Practicing in her room for hours, all the wand movements perfect, but still no response, still nothing nothing nothing_

_We’re disappointed in your progress_

_The Dark Lord won’t be pleased—have to hide her—keep her safe—_

_Why would we want to keep her safe?_

_She’s our_ child _._

_She’s a mistake. A freak._

_Us freaks have to stick together._

Teysa’s point of view wasn’t perfect, but she was happy to help, and she was used to looking at things from the wrong angle. She knew how to tell someone else to move. As the dark witch advanced on them, it was actually quite helpful to have a broader perspective on the scene. Jace alone might not have seen the cauldron, and he might have tripped over it. But Teysa saw it, and Teysa knew how to navigate when your footing wasn’t secure— _too much dark magic near the delivery room or maybe a curse, we can’t fix it, could also be why she can’t use magic—_ and they danced to the side, easily evading the witch’s spell.

            Not _expelliarmus_ , the witch would probably expect that—but she couldn’t cast spells if she couldn’t use her arm, could she? They grinned, and _oh Merlin_ , the feeling of magic dancing, sparking through her veins for once was exhilarating, it was beautiful, it was _exactly_ what she’d imagined. They hesitated, one brief heartbeat of _but should we_? But sometimes you had to be vicious, and you had to hurt them before they could hurt you. Before they could hurt you _more_.

            They hit the floor, rolled. It was dizzying to watch and feel, but it wasn’t _so_ different from playing Ral’s old video games, the controller vibrating in their hands. Just a little more disorientation, and they were used to being disoriented. “ _Ossum ruptor_!”

            It sounded like a piece of plastic snapping. The witch screamed, wand falling from her fingers without her control, and bounced to the ground. “ _Petrificus totalus_!” And she was falling, frozen like she’d frozen Teysa, in front of Ral’s limp, unconscious— _please be unconscious please he has to be unconscious_ —form.

            She was sobbing and terrified, but they didn’t care; they were raising their wand even as they advanced on her.           

            “Please—I don’t want to die—Jace, please.”

            The streaks of white were widening in her now-dark hair, and she looked pitiful, scrunched onto the floor in a crouch, her big eyes red and puffy with age and tears. They didn’t feel anything but a quiet nausea. This woman had violated Jace in every conceivable way—he couldn’t even trust his own thoughts anymore. And she had made Ral scream; she had nearly killed Elspeth and Nissa, sucking out their life force to extend her own bloated, sickening existence. She was going to pay fot that. She was _going_ to—

            Their wand arm wasn’t even trembling as they raised it. “ _Avada—”_

Jace’s world flattened and then dissipated in a wash of bright light.


	13. Awakening

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jace wakes up.

            He was floating somewhere in a misty void, and there were voices whispering.

_—wake up? Elspeth—_

_—freak—_

_—taxed himself to his limits—_

_—won’t die, Merlin, you’ll see, I’ll awaken however long it takes—_

_—never seen anyone do anything like it—_

There were too many of them. He wanted to block his ears, but he couldn’t feel his hands or his ears, so that was probably not going to work. How could he even find his own thoughts inside all of this mess? Even the little impulse that felt like him—whatever that even meant—felt as if it was about to break up into separate little fragments.

            _Please be quiet_ , he tried to say, but he didn’t have any way to say it either. He wasn’t really sure if there was anything he could do except float in the void and try to stop it from pulling him apart, but he was exhausted. He had a muted, fragmented feeling that he wasn’t even sure if his thoughts could be trusted, and if he wasn’t anything _but_ those thoughts anymore, maybe it would just be better for everyone if he gave up and let the voices be everything. It would certainly be a lot more restful.

            _Jace. Your name is Jace Beleren._

He didn’t recognize that voice, although he felt as if he ought to.

            _Sleep, child. I’ll keep the others out._

The buzzing voices went suddenly, blissfully silent, and Jace felt as if a cold mist was wrapping around him. Sleep sounded like a wonderful option, and he no longer felt as if it meant surrender to total nothingness.

            _Thank you_ , he whispered to the voice that he didn’t recognize, and he slipped back downward into unconsciousness.

~

            When he woke up again, Jace’s mind felt bruised but significantly more normal. He could feel his limbs and the bed beneath him, which he counted as a success. He wasn’t entirely sure he was capable of movement still, because there seemed to be a foggy disconnect between his awareness and his body, but at least he could feel it now. And at least his consciousness seemed to be in one piece.

            He had a feeling something bad had happened, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. There was still a chilly touch in the back of his mind, as if someone had—

            _Get out!_ _Get OUT_! Someone was blocking off his access to part of his head, and Jace didn’t know why, but he couldn’t stand the feeling. He sat up, his stomach heaving, and he was vomiting over the side of the bed before he’d even really realized it.

            The chilly touch withdrew almost immediately, and there were hands on his back, holding him steady.

            “Steady now,” said Professor Granger’s calm voice.

            The memories that had been blocked off surged to the forefront of Jace’s mind, and he gagged again, bringing up more stinging bile. Ral screaming. Not being able to _think_. Emmara—no—Liliana—no—France was mostly a blur, but Jace thought the witch had either figured out pretty quickly what he could do, or she’d gotten him to her cottage specifically because she already knew about it. He had a hazy image of a newspaper article about himself, something about “breaking the bounds of the human mind” which had been a source of rather embarrassed pride for both him and Ranna when it came out, but he wasn’t certain if the memory was connected to Liliana or not.

            She’d definitely dosed him early on, because in almost all of his memories of her—in all the memories that must have been Liliana instead of Emmara—there was that same sort of incomprehensible hero worship. It wasn’t that he would have done anything for her, not exactly—he hadn’t been that mind-controlled, Jace thought miserably. No, she’d just—made him think she was beautiful. Gorgeous. Perfect. And then she’d let him do the rest.

            Because he’d been afraid to lose her. And she’d made him think that he wasn’t really worthy of her, but she was so kind, and if he just tried hard enough, she wouldn’t leave him. So he’d used his _legilimency_ to trick the Sorting Hat, because she’d clung to him and said she was frightened of something intruding on her thoughts, and he remembered his own Sorting—and then he’d cut class to snog her, and he’d—and Ral had—

            Oh, Merlin. Ral.

            “Professor—is Ral—is he okay?”

            There was a pause, and Jace’s stomach prepared to void itself again.

            “He’s still asleep,” Professor Granger said. “The healers are hopeful, but he was quite seriously affected, so they’re keeping him sedated until the nerves are fully healed.”

            The Cruciatus curse. Right. And Jace had just—just _stood_ there and fucking _watched_ as Ral—as he screamed—

            And there it all was, preserved in perfect sound and color in his memory whenever he felt like going back for it. “But he’s gonna be okay, right?”

            “Almost certainly.” _Almost_. Jace felt sick.

            “What about Elspeth? And Nissa? Are—are they—”

            “They both woke up yesterday. They’re still a little weak, but nothing worse than a bad flu.” Jace felt his shoulders slump a little, and Professor Granger patted his shoulder reassuringly. “We were more worried about you than about anyone else.”

            “Me?” Jace echoed in confusion. “Why?” They shouldn’t have worried about him. This whole mess was his fault, after all. His stomach turned over as he remembered commandeering Teysa’s head. Not that he’d really had much of a choice by that time, but it was still—not the greatest thing he’d ever done.

            Professor Granger’s eyebrows went up. “Perhaps you don’t realize this, Jace, but you were in a coma. Again. Ms. Karloff spent three days trying to sort out her memories from yours—” Jace winced, “—and since you’d clearly done some complex legilimency with her and, according to her, with Vess, _after_ throwing off the effects of an extremely complex and powerful love potion, we were afraid you might be—damaged. Possibly irreparably.”

            Why hadn’t anyone noticed the potion earlier? Did Jace just normally act the way he’d been acting? He was pretty sure that wasn’t true. Maybe no one cared enough. It had been a few years since he’d felt like that, but the sick feeling was rising in his stomach again, and he scrunched his eyes shut. “Yeah, well, I’m fine,” he said shortly, swallowing down all the other words in a painful lump. Ral had cared. Ral had cared, and now he was—

            Jace swiped an arm across his eyes, and then thought of something else. “Where’s Kallist?” he demanded. “What did she do to him?” He couldn’t remember what excuse Liliana had given him, but he knew he hadn’t seen the little cloud in the entire semester.

            “Would you like to see him? We just didn’t want him raining all over your hospital bed while you were unconscious.”

            “Yeah.”

            “I think Mirko would also like to check on you, if you don’t mind.”

            Jace’s brain threw up the fuzzy memory of standing still as Mirko was banished, and he gulped in another sudden breath of panic. “Mirko—”

            “—helped put your mind back together after this whole mess,” Professor Granger told him firmly.

            “They’re okay, too? But weren’t they—b-banished?”

            “Teysa and Chandra told us they were, but they reconstituted with what seemed to be all their memories, somehow. I don’t think anyone’s asked them yet.” She cracked a faint smile. “It’s been a bit busy around here.”

            “Yeah, I’ll see them,” Jace said, breathing a guilty sigh of relief that he hadn’t just stood there and watched while one of his closest friends had _died_.

            “And I’m sure your mother will want to see you as well. She was up with you all last night, and she’s still asleep.”

            _Ranna_. “Did—Liliana—did she put my mum under—”

            Because if _anyone_ should have noticed he was acting oddly, it was his mum.

            “She’s fine, Jace,” Professor Granger said evasively, and Jace sat up and reached for the hood of his cloak, but she put her hands over his. “Jace. Don’t.”

            “Then _tell_ me.”

            Professor Granger frowned. “You have to promise not to use legilimency until the healers say you can.”

            Jace’s lips thinned. “No,” he said tautly. “I’m not promising fucking _anything_. I’m not going to do what someone else says, I don’t care what happens to me, it’s not like _you_ cared enough to _notice_ —” He cut himself off, because he was _not_ going to fucking cry right now. He just wasn’t.

            There was a soft intake of breath. “All right,” Professor Granger said. “You don’t have to promise, Jace. But please consider your mother’s feelings before you do something that runs the risk of damaging your mind.”

            “…fine,” he muttered into the covers.

            “Ranna was under a befuddlement charm, quite a strong one. She did not have a good reaction to it, but she is fine. All right?”

            So he’d gotten his mother hurt as well. Of course. Jace wanted to kick and scream and punch. He wanted to bite through the flesh of his hands, rip his cloak off and just let himself dissolve into everyone around him. Some little insistent voice in the back of his head held him back from doing any of that, and instead, he just nodded shortly. “Yeah, okay. Can I see Kallist and Mirko now?”

            A pause. Professor Granger sighed. “Yes, Jace.”

            _And then I’m getting out of here_. Kallist and Mirko would help him, Jace was sure, and he suddenly couldn’t stand being in the Hospital Wing any longer. He needed to be somewhere where he didn’t feel as if people were trying to keep him still, were hovering over him and _watching_ —now, _now_ they were, when no one had been there earlier. When no one had seen anything wrong, except—except Ral, and Ral—

            _He’s going to be okay. He’s got to be okay._

If Ral wasn’t okay, Jace thought bleakly, he was never going to be okay again. Ever.

~

            Hermione put her head into her hands. This was a mess. Everything was a mess. She’d never seen Jace so _angry_ before. He was usually the quiet one. It wasn’t as if he was a model student, but he didn’t usually get angry the way some of the other students—Ral especially—did. He was hurting terribly—no wonder—and she had no idea how to help.

            A pair of soft hands landed on her shoulders. “Hermione?”

            “Morning.” She leaned backward miserably. “Oh, Luna. I don’t know what to do. They’re all hurt so badly, and we should have _protected_ them. I should have kept them safe.” She pressed the palms of her hands into her eyes.

            “Me, too,” Luna whispered. “I’m a professor too, Hermione.”

            “You don’t know Jace or Ral. I thought it was just the usual teenage drama, and I _shouldn’t have_. I should have pressed harder when Ral got upset about it, but I thought—oh, I don’t know.” She shut her eyes against the feeling, but it only got worse. “I don’t think Jace will ever trust me again,” she sniffed. “I’ve known him since he was _five_ , Luna, and I—I wanted to adopt him, and he—he’ll never trust me again, and, honestly, I don’t blame him! I wouldn’t trust me again!”

            Ron, back when they were dating, would have protested. Would have told Hermione that it wasn’t her fault or some other such nonsense. Luna didn’t say anything. She just leaned forward and pressed her cheek into Hermione’s, and held her, arms crossed over the front of Hermione’s chest. Another sob welled out of Hermione’s throat.

“People don’t trust people because they deserve it,” Luna said slowly. “We just have to help Jace now.”

            “But _how_?” Hermione asked wildly. “Oh, Merlin, if I knew _how_ to help, I would do it! I’d do anything, I really would. But this is…this is so…”

            “Maybe we could ask Ginny what helped her?”

            “Ginny?”

            “Well, you know, she did say to me that the year she was possessed by Voldemort was quite bad, and I know she still has nightmares about it, of course, but she’s doing rather well, all things considered.” Luna pressed her lips into Hermione’s hair.

            “Yes, I suppose it couldn’t hurt.” Hermione sniffed again and rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. “I really must stop feeling so sorry for myself. I just need to figure out what Jace needs right now.”

            She firmly pushed away the raw, appalled feeling of guilt and hurt and the prick of _he will never trust you again_ and sat up. “Yes,” she managed briskly. “Let’s owl Ginny. It definitely can’t hurt. And—and we’ll talk to Ranna, now that she’s feeling better and Jace is awake.”

            “Hermione—oh, thank goodness.” It was Madam Pomfrey, frowning, worried.

            Hermione’s heart leapt into her throat. Everyone had been doing so much better—had Ral taken a turn for the worse? Had— “What is it, Poppy?”

            “Mr. Beleren is gone.”

            _Oh no._ Hermione shut her eyes. “All right. Get hold of Harry and Draco—” she was relatively sure she remembered someone telling her they’d gotten back at some point in the past twelve hours, but she’d been too busy checking on the students in the Hospital Wing to interface with them, “—get hold of everyone. We’ve got to find him.”

            “We will.” Luna squeezed her shoulder. “We’ll find him.”

~

            Elspeth blinked her eyes open. She’d been drifting in and out of consciousness for several days now, during which time she’d managed to gather a fair bit about what had been going on since she’d collapsed at her Quidditch match. The experience was incredibly frustrating. Every time she started feeling guilty about not listening to Ral when he’d been thoroughly and utterly vindicated, she fell asleep again. She would have been furious with herself if she’d had the energy for it.

            This time, although she was still tired enough that she didn’t feel like getting out of the bed, she was at least clearheaded enough to not want to fall back to sleep. For several minutes, she lay and breathed and enjoyed the sensation of being aware of things around her. She could hear cloth shifting somewhere beside her, and after another few minutes, she turned her head to the side.

            Teysa was looking back at her, face open with surprise.

            “Hello,” Elspeth said weakly.

            “H-hi,” her penpal stammered back. “How are you feeling?”

            She was perched on one of the ugly hospital chairs, one leg drawn up beneath her and the other not quite reaching the ground. She seemed even smaller in person than she had in her picture, somehow.

            “Still tired.” Digging her elbow into the bed, Elspeth slowly started propping herself up. It wasn’t easy, but she managed. “What are you doing here?” No, wait, that was a silly question, she’d heard enough snatches of conversation to know. “You came because you were worried about me.”

            Teysa opened her mouth and took in a quick breath. “I—well, yes.”

            “I’d say this is unusual, but it’s really not. You already sort of know that, though.” They’d been penpals for long enough that Teysa was privy to quite a number of the more dangerous stunts that Jace and Ral had pulled over the years. Elspeth thought, rather sanctimoniously, that she had at least not _instigated_ any of those, and then thought again about Ral trying to make anyone listen to him, and writhed.

            “It is a bit unusual,” Teysa said softly.

            Elspeth nodded, turning her face to the side so that the pillow would catch the tears. “How are Ral and Jace?” she asked.           

            “Ral’s—okay. He’s not awake, but they said that’s mostly because they haven’t let him. His nerves need time to heal, or he would have a very unpleasant few days.”

            “And Jace?” Elspeth pressed uneasily.

            Teysa shrugged. “Last I heard, he hadn’t woken up yet. He, um, left some bits in my head.”

            That didn’t sound good. “What bits?” Elspeth asked nervously.

            “Mostly good bits,” Teysa said, with a wave of her hand. “I know how it feels to do magic, now. But…” she chewed on her lip. “Well, I may have added to my stock of really terrible memories. I already had quite a number of those.”

            Elspeth pulled a face. “Yeah, I’ve seen a few of Jace’s memories,” she said quietly. “He shouldn’t have to deal with them. Nobody else should, either.”

            “Don’t worry about me.” Teysa leaned forward and gingerly patted Elspeth’s hand. “I’m good at taking care of myself. I’ve been doing it for a while.”

            “Of course.” Smiling, Elspeth took Teysa’s hand. That much was probably all right, at least.

            “Can I hug you?” Definitely all right, then. Elspeth nodded. Grunting, Teysa shifted herself forward so that she could get down from the chair and kneel on the bed.

            “I was so worried,” she admitted softly as Elspeth gathered her in her arms. She was so small that Elspeth could rest her chin on Teysa’s head, although partly that was because Teysa was pushing her face into Elspeth’s chest. “You—you are one of my only friends, and I thought I was going to lose you. I would have killed the witch if I could.”

            “So would I.” Elspeth looked up. Jace, trembling, his cloak pulled tight around him, stood in the doorway, Kallist hovering directly overhead. A blurred figure hovering behind him had to be Mirko. “But then I guess we both tried to. I’m so sorry, both of you.”

            “Jace!” Elspeth exclaimed. “Oh, Merlin! How are you feeling?”

            “Oh, um, I’m fine,” Jace said vaguely. “Would you mind if I used your window?”

            Elspeth blinked at him. “My…window?” she repeated.

            “I, um, I really would like to not be here anymore. In the room. In the hospital wing, I mean.”

            “Are you sure…” Elspeth trailed off uncertainly. Jace looked exhausted. There were huge, dark circles beneath his eyes, and his face was pale and gaunt, as if he’d been sick for weeks.

            “Yeah, I just. I feel. I feel trapped. Please.”

            She was nodding almost before he’d finished the sentence, because Jace should _not_ have that raw, frightened note of pleading in his voice. He hadn’t sounded this small and afraid in years. Teysa slid across the bed and undid the window by hand. “Here. Just be careful, all right?”

            “Mmm,” Jace assented, and Elspeth really hoped he’d heard her.

            “Jace,” she said quickly.

            “Huh?” He turned as he stepped up onto the window ledge, Kallist floating above him and Mirko behind him.

            “ _I’m_ sorry. I should’ve listened to Ral.”

            For an instant, Jace’s face crumpled, tears welling up in his eyes, and he gulped in a sob. Then he shut his eyes and stepped backwards. Elspeth’s stomach jumped into her throat before she heard him say, “ _Wingardium leviosa_ ,” catching himself before he’d fallen more than a foot or so.

            “Where are you going?” Elspeth asked. “I mean, if—can I ask that?” He was so skittish right now.

            “Mmm. Astronomy Tower, I think.” Jace sounded distracted. “Uh, I guess you can tell Professor Malfoy if he asks, but don’t tell anyone else, please?”

            “I won’t. I promise.”

            He nodded jerkily and disappeared from view below the window. Elspeth found herself staring after him. “Oh, damn,” she said suddenly, pressing her hands to her eyes. “Oh, damn, damn, _damn_.”

            “You can cry if you need to,” Teysa said in a small voice. “I cried a lot, actually. Although I’m not exactly sure if I was the one crying the whole time.”

            Elspeth sniffed and brushed the tears away, decided she wasn’t quite ready to have a good cry just yet, and rested her head on Teysa’s shoulder. “Everything is awful,” she said. “It’s so awful.”

            “Jace is awake,” Teysa pointed out, “Ral is doing better, Jace is out of my head, and I’m here now. I even got to use magic.”

            “Still.”

            “Yes, it’s not great.” She sighed, and one hand brushed gently against Elspeth’s cheek. “I don’t know your friends, not really. I know you—a bit—but I don’t know you as well as I should. I should have visited you much earlier than this, but, well, I—”

            “You can’t do magic, and you didn’t want to feel out of place at Hogwarts. You said, I got it, I never expected you to come out here.” Elspeth reached out, found Teysa’s hand, and interlaced their fingers. “I’m just glad you’re here _now_.”

            “I should have been here earlier.” Teysa was pensive. “Not because I could possibly have known about this—” And Elspeth felt an unpleasant twinge, because _she_ should’ve known. She should’ve listened to Ral. “But because I’ve been living in my own little bubble for too long. Everything you sent me about this summer sounded _fantastic_.”

            “You’d like it.” Elspeth smiled, thinking about Teysa wearing Muggle clothes, going on an outing with her and Ral to the mall. “You’d _love_ it.”

            “Maybe we can talk about something like that once things get a bit, well, better.”

            “Yeah,” Teysa agreed.

            They leaned against one another, and Elspeth was starting to feel drowsy again—so she probably still needed some time to recover—when someone knocked on the door.

            Teysa glanced over and waited for Elspeth to nod before calling out, “Come in!”

            It was Professor Granger, looking worried. “Have either of you seen Jace?” she asked. Elspeth found herself glancing over at Teysa, but Teysa’s face was smooth and unconcerned. Elspeth herself felt faintly sick and worried, and she wasn’t about to lie to a professor, but she wasn’t going to do anything Jace didn’t want, either.

            So she said, “Is Professor Malfoy there?”


	14. Seething Anger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jace tries to cope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings: Suicidal thoughts, self-loathing, dissociation, discussions of rape. This chapter is really quite dark, please take care.

            Draco found Jace sitting, somewhat carelessly, on the edge of the Astronomy Tower with his legs dangling over the edge, the blue curve of his hood hiding his face, and Kallist hovering so close to his hair that he was almost brushing the wild dark locks. A dark blur hanging in the air beside him had to be Mirko.

            “Jace.” Draco announced himself softly from the doorway, trying not to startle the boy.

            For a moment, he thought Jace hadn’t heard him, and then, the head turned slightly, and Jace spoke, his voice monotonous but tight, as if he were trying to keep something back—tears maybe. “I could erase it,” he said. “All the things she did to me—I could make myself forget. It wouldn’t even be that hard.”

            Draco gingerly took several steps closer, one hand resting lightly on his wand, in case he needed to effect an impromptu rescue. The first question was one he needed to ask. Harry or Hermione would have been delicate about it, but Draco wasn’t much good at delicate, and, in any case, he wasn’t certain Jace would appreciate it. “Did she rape you?” he asked quietly.

            “Yes,” Jace answered, in a low voice. “Not the way you mean it, though. We didn’t have sex, just messed around.” He paused, and Draco was trying to decide whether to prompt him or not, when he spoke again. “Wasn’t this what Professor Potter was supposed to be teaching me to protect myself from?” Jace snarled. “She got into my _head_. She made me do things. She made me _want_ her. And—and I was cruel to Ral. I don’t even know if I can blame her for that. I could’ve talked to him about some of the stuff, but she made herself more important to me than he was. She—she—” his voice was trembling. “Yeah, she raped me,” he snapped. “And no one even _noticed_.”

            The accusation was painful, but accurate. None of the professors had noticed anything particularly wrong. Jace had acted so very nearly in-character that the only person who had realized something was wrong was the boy that all the staff had written off as “merely jealous.” Although, Draco thought clinically, it was unfortunate that Ral flew off the handle so easily. It might have been easier to believe him if he’d been calmer, more rational. Still. Jace had a point.

            “Ral is very important to you.” That hadn’t been what Draco had been going to say, but something tipped the words out of his mouth. Jace nodded fiercely.

            “He—he’s the most important thing in the world to me,” he said, with a little wobble in his voice. “He’s the first friend I ever made. Of course there’s Ranna and Elspeth, they’re almost as important, but I haven’t hurt them the way I hurt him. They weren’t—they weren’t t-tortured. And—” Jace bit off whatever he’d been about to say and sighed.

            “Yes,” Draco agreed. “I’m afraid many of the professors failed you this year, Jace. There’s little to say in our defense. All I’ll say is that I’m sorry.”

            “You could have let me kill her,” Jace muttered angrily.

            “Well. Perhaps not.” Draco walked across to the ledge and stood beside him, but didn’t touch him. “When she stunned you, Luna was protecting you, not the witch. I imagine she’d have a justification like you being too young to kill, or it hurting your soul, but putting anything so metaphysical aside, you would have been in a much more difficult situation if you’d killed her. It might even have gone to trial, and although you’d undoubtedly have been cleared of wrongdoing, that’s not something you need to deal with right now.”

            Jace muttered something that sounded like, _fuck that_ , but Draco let it slide. “Do you need anything?” he asked gently.

            “I need out of my _head_. I need to forget it.” Jace’s hands twisted in the cloth of his cloak. “I really could make myself forget it, but then I wouldn’t fucking know what had happened, and then I couldn’t even begin to fix this shit with Ral. How do you ask someone to forgive you for—for _this_?”

            “I don’t know,” Draco said. “How can I ask you to forgive us? Jace, this was _not_ your fault.”

            “It feels like my fault.” He banged a hand into the stones of the wall, shook it out. “Maybe not my fault that I was—you know, in love with her—I guess—” he made a gagging face, “—but it was my fault I wouldn’t even talk to him. I—there was one day—I think he thought I was gonna break up with her, and I almost did. I _tried_ , and she fed me more _fucking_ love potion and—” He ran a shaking hand through his hair.

            “We don’t know all the spells she used on you, Jace, it may have been—and probably was—more than just _Amortentia_ , which is incredibly powerful in its own right. I’ve been analyzing her potions. They aren’t identical to the modern-day versions.”

            “Then how can I ever, _ever_ trust my own thoughts again?” He pulled his cloak around himself even more fiercely. “How can I even trust that the way I feel about Ral—” He stuttered to a halt and glared sideways at Draco.

            Draco raised his eyebrows. “There’s some basis, isn’t there?” he said. “You didn’t just wake up one morning and find yourself in love with him.”

            Jace blanched. “I’m n-not—” he stammered. “I mean, I—uh—” he sighed. “Okay, no, I guess. I guess not. I’ve—he’s—” He swallowed hard. “For a long time. I just didn’t notice. But I can’t—some part of me just doesn’t _believe_ the feelings anymore.”

            “I’m so sorry,” Draco said again. “Jace, we really failed you.”

            Jace sniffed hard. “Yeah,” he muttered, swinging his legs against the stone. “I’m just scared. I’m just so scared. And—and I want to make it _stop_. I don’t want to be in my own head r-right now. Everything in here fucking _hurts_.”

            “Of course you’re afraid,” Draco said, putting a hand out and resting it on Jace’s shoulder when the boy didn’t move away. “Of _course_ you are. You’re allowed to be scared, Jace. It’s all right.”

            “It’s not all right,” Jace mumbled bleakly. “It was easier before I was me again, and that—kind of scares me, too. ” He stared out over the grounds in a way that made Draco’s stomach twist.

            “It scares me as well,” he said quietly. “You’re important to me, Jace. You’re important to all of us. None of this was your fault. You shouldn’t have to feel like this.”

            “Maybe I shouldn’t. But it doesn’t change the fact that I _do_. It doesn’t change the fact that I can’t even trust my own thoughts and feelings anymore. Where does that leave me, the literal Ministry experiment into legilimency?” Jace started laughing, but Draco couldn’t help but think it sounded like crying instead.

            “Jace,” he said, softly, as the laughter intensified and Jace buried his face in his hands. “ _Jace_.” The words were useless. So, perhaps—“would a hug help at all?”

            “I don’t know,” Jace said, voice muffled and distorted, but he twisted around on the ledge and gingerly put out his arms anyway.   Draco leaned forward. This wasn’t exactly something he had much experience in, and he wanted to make sure Jace didn’t feel as if he were being forced into anything at all, but as soon as his hands touched the back of Jace’s head, the boy vaulted forward, burying his face in Draco’s robes. The laughter twisted further into gulping sobs.

            “It’s not your fault,” Draco said again, helplessly, stroking Jace’s hair. “Nothing that happened to you this semester, nothing that you did, _none_ of it is your fault. It’s our fault for not seeing what was happening, and it’s Liliana Vess’s fault for _doing_ this to you. There is absolutely no way in which anything that happened is your fault. Anything— _anything_ you need from us we will do our best to make sure you have.”

            “But all I need from you is for none of this to have _happened_!” Jace’s hands balled into Draco’s robe. “All I need is for the memories to be gone and to stop feeling like this.” The words were almost incoherent.

            Draco’s hand tightened on Jace’s back. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I can’t offer you a permanent solution that will take it all away, but—if you’re still feeling like this when your head is a little more sound—you can pick someone’s head and stay in there. Temporarily make the memories go away. If you want.”

            Jace took a deep, gulping breath in. “Really? I could—get out of my head for a bit?”

            “It would have to be temporary,” Draco said. “We love you, and we don’t want to lose you, Jace. But—yes. I’m sure we could work it out.”

            “You wouldn’t mind me fucking about in there? You wouldn’t be—scared of what I’d do?”

            “I trust you, Jace. I won’t speak for any of your other friends, but I’d bet a lot of money that they’ll say the same if you ask them.”

            “Fuck,” Jace breathed, sniffing again. “Yeah. That might—that might help.”

            “Would you mind coming down now? People _are_ a little worried about you.”

            “Can I at least not be in the Hospital Wing anymore?”

            “Where would you like to be?”

            Jace shrugged mutely. “I don’t really know,” he said softly. “I kinda want to be alone.”

            “Maybe the library? Or out by the pond?”

            “I—I guess the pond would be okay.”

            “All right.”

            Keeping a careful arm around Jace’s back, Draco supported him as he slid off the ledge onto the solid floor of the Astronomy tower. Draco’s heartrate slowed slightly as he managed to move Jace to solid ground, but he tried to be non-obvious about it.

            “All right, then, you’re safe,” he said softly, half to himself, a vocal tick he hadn’t quite lost from the years following the war.

            Jace looked up at him, managing a jerky nod. “Right.”

~

            The sun was setting over the lake. Jace looked up wearily from the book in his lap to stare at it. Although it had been a warm day, he still felt chilled and sick to his stomach. He’d managed to nap for a few minutes at the lakeside, but he’d woken up again feeling dopey and scared. Kallist hovered nervously over his lap; the little cloud hadn’t moved more than a foot away from Jace since he woke up.

            Mirko had been checking on him throughout the day, so Jace wasn’t terribly surprised when he felt the chilly cloak of mist settle over his shoulders, and he glanced up to see the shadowy, washed-out face peering down at him. Perspective and Mirko didn’t always make much sense together, and Jace had to blink rapidly to force the features to resolve in a way he could vaguely make sense of.

            _Mother_ , Mirko thought at him, along with a sense of warmth approaching, and the flickering vision of a long plait of white hair. “Ranna?” Jace said. “Ranna’s here?”

            “Jace!” her voice called a moment later, and he saw her waving at him as she hurried across Hogwarts’ vast lawn.

            “Oh, god,” Jace said blankly. The universe seemed suddenly too large, and he huddled in his cloak instead of getting up to greet her.

            Despite the sudden apparent inflation of the world, Ranna crossed the lawn quickly, then knelt in the grass in front of him and opened her arms. Jace stared at her, knowing he ought to move, knowing that the correct thing to do in this situation was to let her embrace him, but feeling somehow distant, awkward, and unable to react the way he should.

            His mother hesitated. “I’m all right, Jace,” she said softly. “It was just a befuddlement charm—I came to see you as soon as the healers let me out.”

            There was a long pause. “Yeah. Right,” Jace replied, because an affirmative response made sense, even if he wasn’t sure what kind of affirmative response. This was infuriating. It was like the way he’d felt calm when there was something wrong inside his head, and he knew it, but he didn’t know what switch to flip this time to make it go away, or to make the emotions come back.

            Awkwardly, Ranna folded her hands across her knees. “Are you all right, Jace?” She shook her head. “That’s the stupidest question I’ve asked in a while, of course you’re not all right.”

            “I think my emotions broke,” Jace said cautiously. He felt like a puppeteer pulling the strings on his own body, and there was a weird delay between deciding to speak and actually getting the words to come out.

            Even through the cloak, he felt the spike of fear that shot through Ranna, clear as a bell. It was gone as suddenly as it had come, and he tried to ignore it, because it was rude to read other people’s emotions without asking. “Is there anything you need from me?” she asked. “Would it be easier for you to stay here, or would you rather come home early? Professor McGonagall said that either was perfectly doable.”

            Somebody—not Jace, but somebody—didn’t want to go back to the little flat he shared with Ranna. It would be so empty and alone. Even when he was alone here, he was never very far away from crowds of people, and crowds of people were easy—he could lose himself in their minds, never come back out. If he really wanted to. A sob caught in Jace’s throat, then vanished frustratingly almost as soon as it had surfaced.

            “I’ll stay.” Long pause, too long. “Thanks, Mum.”

            _I really want my emotions back._ Jace shivered, moving closer to Ranna and gingerly resting his head on her shoulder. He thought about staring down from the Astronomy Tower and not wanting to exist. Maybe he _didn’t_ want his emotions back. The state he was in right now was chilly and—it seemed to be a lot of effort—but it didn’t hurt, the pinching, terrifying pain in his stomach that made him want everything to just fucking _stop_ forever.

            “There’s—something else.” Ranna was looking down at her hands, twisting a loose thread from her robes around a finger. “Your teachers should have told you, but I’m afraid—it got lost in all of the—well.” She paused for a fraction of a second, then pushed the words through her lips in a way that sounded like it took quite a bit of effort. “Emmara Tandris is dead.”

            Jace’s first thought was, _I didn’t expect the Ministry to let her die that fast_. His second thought was, _She doesn’t mean Liliana_. His third thought was a memory.

            _The boy’s eyes are dilated, and his breathing is too fast. He’s trembling, one hand clutched around a wand he should already have used. She smiles, keeping her own wand pointed directly at him. The blue cloak he’s wearing stinks of Occlumency. It would tell her everything she needs to know even if she hadn’t been waiting for him._

_A pity he arrived so quickly, though. She knew he had made friends with the local girl; the two of them met when he and his mother were pausing in between sightseeing at the local café. A stroke of luck for her, since it gave her an easy way to summon him here. He’s just a bit earlier than she might have liked._

_She sighs. “Drink this,” she says, stepping over the still-warm body of the girl on the ground and holding out the flask._

_“No,” he whispers, and she’s not sure if he’s trying to tell her he won’t, or if he’s just talking the way people do, sometimes._

_“Jace. It’s me.” Casting the glamer spell without her wand is more difficult than she expected, but she thinks she manages to put up a reasonable facsimile of the girl at her feet. “It’s all right,” she says soothingly. “It’s a boggart. I was practicing some cosmetic charms when I found it.” She manages a light laugh and presses the flask into his hand. “I know it looks scary.”_

_His brow furrows, and she smiles encouragingly. “I’m so sorry I frightened you.” The accent isn’t easy, and she’s probably doing it wrong. Damn him; damn that cloak. If he doesn’t take the potion, she’s going to be in trouble. And if she presses too hard—_

_“Are you sure it’s a boggart?” he asks. “I’ve got quite a bit of experience with them.” Oh, thank Morrigan. He takes the flask and sips from it as he circles around the girl’s body. “I’m—I’m pretty sure—”_

_“Jace. Look at me.” She sees the moment the potion catches him, his jaw going slightly slack and the muscles around his eyes relaxing. It’s a higher dose than she might give him normally, but not high enough that it’s likely to be dangerous. “You seem frightened.”_

_“I—” He presses a hand into his forehead, blinking rapidly. His cheeks flush and his pulse increases as the potion takes effect. “I feel dizzy.”_

_“Why don’t you sit down?” Putting an arm around his shoulder, she steers him gently away from the girl’s body and towards the door. “I think this really has worried you, has it not?” A kiss on the cheek, and he’s staring at her as if she’s the only thing in the universe. And—she restrains herself from wrinkling her nose—he’s aroused. Lovely. Teenage boys are such trouble. “You are so talented with your Legilimency,” she murmurs. “Why don’t you just erase this little incident from your head? Then you won’t have to worry about it.” Again that little frown. She manages a giggle as she pokes at his forehead. “Oh, frowny-face, I’d love to see you do some of your famous mind magic.”_

He couldn’t breathe. He had _her_ memories and not his own. He wanted to carve them out of his head, he wanted them _gone_ , he wanted to rip his own mind apart and scatter the pieces. _Well,_ said a tiny voice in the back of his mind, _your emotions are back._

            Emmara’d been his friend. He hadn’t known her very well, but they’d giggled together, and she’d asked about Hogwarts. They’d chatted about her life, about Potions, about—about Ral. And he hadn’t even noticed when it had all changed. If he’d just—run—maybe he could have saved her. Maybe he could have done _something_.

            His mind told him that she’d been dead when he got there, but then all he could think was, _If she’d never met me, she’d be alive_.

            There were warm arms encircling him, and Jace pressed his face into Ranna’s chest and sobbed. “I wish I was dead, I wish I’d never been born…”

            “Oh, Jace, don’t, please.” Ranna stroked his forehead, as if he was still a little boy waking up from screaming nightmares. “It’s not your fault. None of this was your fault.”

            “I hurt everyone.” Every breath he took was terribly shallow, catching in the back of his throat before it could make it down to his lungs. “Ev—everybody would be better off if I didn’t exist, Ral’s still in a fucking coma. What if he never wakes up? And Emmara is dead. Because—because of _me_. I shouldn’t fucking _exist_.” He slammed his hand into the ground with enough force to bruise.

            “Stop it, Jace.” Ranna’s soft voice grew harder. “Your entire life, people have exploited you. That is not your fault. None of it is your fault.”

            “I wish I was dead,” Jace gasped, pressing his hands into his eyes to try and force the tears back in. Ranna had just recovered from a befuddlement charm; falling apart in front of her wasn’t going to help anyone. Wrapping his arms around himself, he tried to get his breathing to calm down. Above him, Kallist was crackling and shooting lightning in every direction. “Can I—can I please just—get out of my fucking _head_? Please, Mum, just don’t make me think right now—just—”

            “Jace—” Ranna sounded shaken, _good job, Jace_. “Let’s get you back to the castle, okay?”

            Somehow, he managed to nod. If he went back to the castle, even if he couldn’t get into someone else’s head, he could sleep. He could put a cauldron full of drowsiness potion above a candle and shut all the windows. Elspeth’d done that. She’d been fine. Right now, Jace wasn’t entirely convinced he wanted to be fine, either.

            Ranna helped him to his feet, and he felt Mirko’s only partially solid limbs brush against his back. It was hard to stand, because he was trembling hard, and he was still breathing shallowly and rapidly.

            It seemed to take forever to cross the lawn, the world still huge and faraway, although the pinching pain in his stomach was back, and he no longer felt like a puppet—or at least not like a puppet that he was in control of. Professor Granger met them at the front doors.

            “Do you need anything?” she said, looking first to Jace and then, when he couldn’t seem to find words, to Ranna.

            “I think Jace could use a soporific, if he’s all right with that.”

            Miserably, Jace nodded. He couldn’t ask to be in someone else’s head right now, and everything was spinning, and he just wanted to curl up in a corner and wall off the rest of the world. “Potion of Dreamless Sleep?” he asked softly, and Professor Granger nodded. “I’ll get Madam Pomfrey to prepare one,” she said quietly.


	15. Mending Touch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Ral wakes up and there is cuddling.

Jace poked at his food. He was huddled in his cloak in front of one of the many little alcoves in the library. Technically, food wasn’t allowed, but Jace didn’t give a fuck, and the teachers seemed willing to overlook minor infractions on his part right now. Which they damn well should, he thought bitterly, and then felt his stomach turn over. He didn’t deserve special treatment, no matter what anyone said.

            He probably should eat. He was hungry in a sort of distant way, but everything seemed so tasteless that it was difficult to get himself to eat. And Ral still wasn’t awake. He kept asking and asking, but every time he asked he got the same answer, “he’s doing fine, but the nerves aren’t healed yet, it’s better if he stays asleep.”

            How did they know? He’d tried reading everything he could lay his hands on about the Cruciatus Curse, but he’d had to stop doing that after he’d thrown up over a part of the Restricted Section he probably shouldn’t have had access to in the first place. He’d managed to clean it up and leave before anyone found him, but the books hadn’t been happy. Several of them had followed him around for the rest of the day, complaining in rustly, incomprehensible voices.

            Someone shoved a very garish image of a cartoon sandwich into his head. Mirko could have been subtler, but they seemed to be trying to make it easy for Jace to know when someone else was in his head. Jace was very carefully not thinking about the fact that, although it was true that Mirko could get under the protections of his cloak, he was pretty sure he’d heard snatches of other thoughts even from inside. That shouldn’t be happening. That shouldn’t be _possible_.

            “I’m not hungry,” Jace sighed, out loud. His stomach rumbled. The cartoon sandwich grew eyes and looked at him accusingly. “Okay, I _am_ hungry, but I don’t want to eat.”

            Ral wasn’t eating, after all, Jace thought mulishly. Of course, he was in the hospital wing and getting all of his food magically, but it sounded suitably dramatic in Jace’s head. There was the suggestion of a sigh in the back of his mind, and a cold wind brushed against his neck like a not-quite-corporeal touch. The banishment had left Mirko somewhat less willing to take a solid form. Jace was just glad that somehow the boggart had managed to use their connection to hang onto his memories, in spite of the love potion clouding his mind at the time.

            “Jace?” Jace froze. It was Professor Lovegood’s voice. Pulling the hood of his cloak up, Jace felt for his wand, wondering if he should try out that invisibility charm he’d pulled out of Liliana’s head. Before he could make up his mind, Kallist shot up into the air, spitting lightning in every direction.

            “Kallist, no!” Jace hissed, but it was too late. Professor Lovegood poked her head around the bookshelf.

            “Oh, hello,” she said. “You know, if you get the books some rubbing alcohol, they’ll probably calm down.”

            “The books?” Jace echoed, trying to sound innocent. One particularly irritable one chose that moment to snap closed on his ankle, and he yelped.

            “Yes, I upset them earlier this year, so I’ve tried to make sure I knew the kinds of things they liked.” Jace hadn’t paid much attention during Herbology this year—or any class—so he wasn’t sure if Professor Lovegood usually had that wide, vaguely dreamy smile on her face.

            “Um, I see.”

            “In any case, Hermione—Professor Granger, I mean—sent me to tell you that Mr. Zarek is awake.”

            Jace stopped trying to surreptitiously nudge the book away and looked up at her. It was suddenly difficult to breathe. “He—he is? Is he—okay? Can I see him? Or—does he—want to see me?”

            Professor Lovegood smiled. “He’s feeling much better, although his nerves are just a little oversensitive still, so Madam Pomfrey is trying to get him to stay in bed. I think his exact words were, ‘Tell Jace to get his ass down here, or I’ll soak the entire Hospital Wing.’ You should probably go down, because I think Madam Pomfrey looked like she really wished she could give him detention.”

~

            Ral was bored. After his first waking hour of lying around in the hospital wing, most of the tingling pain in his nerves had subsided, leaving him slightly achey and very restless. Madam Pomfrey always seemed to force people to stay in bed about five times longer than they wanted to, and Ral was getting really concerned about Jace. Jace had already had issues that Ral didn’t really know how to help, though he thought he’d been getting better. But now—

            Someone knocked on the door. “Who is it?” he yelled irritably. If it was Madam Pomfrey with another foul-smelling potion, he might just “accidentally” have an electrical outburst and shatter the damn thing.

            The door opened a crack. “It’s me,” Jace said, so quietly Ral almost didn’t hear him. “Can I come in?”

            “Yeah, of course.” Ral wriggled upright. “How are you?”

            Jace stopped in the doorway and blinked. Kallist was hovering nervously over his head. “I—I’m fine. How are you?”

            “Aching a little, I guess. I don’t think I still need to be in bed, but you know what the teachers are like. Way too careful about all the wrong fucking things.”

            For another moment or two, Jace dithered in the doorway, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet in a way Ral hadn’t seen him do in years. Finally, he practically ran across the room to Ral’s bed and sank onto it. “I’m sorry,” he muttered into his cloak. “Oh god, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” Something wet fell onto Ral’s hand.

            “What the fuck,” he said stupidly.

            “Do you, um—” Jace paused. “Sorry. Just—just a sec.” His voice was wobbling. “Do you want me to leave?”

            “What the _fuck_ , Jace? No!”

            “I’m sorry.”

            “Jesus fuck, _why_?”

            “For ignoring you. For not listening to you. For not responding to your IMs over the summer, and being a fucking dick to you this whole year. For getting you—for—for—”

            “Oh my fucking god,” Ral said limply. “You were literally _under a spell_ , Jace, what the hell? Do you really think I’d _blame_ you for that? What the shit?”

            The little pile of misery under the cloak tugged at his hair. “You should,” he mumbled after a moment. “I should’ve—”

            “—thrown off the most potent love potion any of the professors have ever heard of, gone toe-to-toe with one of the most powerful dark witches in history, and nearly fucking killed her into the bargain?” Jace blinked at him. “Because you kind of _did all that_ , you idiot.” A tiny lightning bolt from the cloud above him suggested that Kallist agreed with Ral’s assessment. “Now get over here.”

            “Are you—sure?”

            Ral rolled his eyes and felt that strange staticky sensation rise up along the back of his neck again. Ever since he’d woken up with his nerves still twitching and jangling and oversensitive, it had been all too easy to trigger. And for once, he’d discovered there was something he wasn’t in too much of a hurry to research. He really didn’t want to know any more about the effects of the Cruciatus Curse than he already did. Well. Not yet, anyway. He made a mental note to come back to it in a couple weeks. “Yes, I’m bloody sure,” he grunted, and a spark materialized at the tip of one flopping lock of hair and sizzled down onto the sheets near his hand.

            “Right.” Jace took a deep breath and slid down the bed to him. For a moment, he sat still, then he had a hand out and bunched in the hospital robes Ral was wearing. “Oh, Ral,” he said, wearily. And then he was pressing his face into Ral’s chest, and to Ral’s consternation and horror, he was sobbing. “Fuck,” he muttered. “Oh, fuck, I thought—oh _fuck_ , what did I _do_?”

            You were supposed to hold people when they broke down like this, right? Ral gingerly put one hand on Jace’s back and tried not to think about the fact that he was stupidly oversensitive right now. “You didn’t fucking do anything,” he said, biting his lip because Jace was _squirming_ and that was _not fucking fair_ , universe, that was goddamn fucking _cheating_. Jace was definitely positively one-hundred-percent not in a good mindset to be dealing with Ral exploding romantic feelings all over him. It could wait.

            _No, it can’t_ , caroled a particularly annoying segment of Ral’s brain as one of Jace’s hands brushed across his collarbone.

            _Yes, it damn well can,_ Ral told it fiercely, but he did press his face into Jace’s hair, because he wasn’t a goddamn saint.

            “Shut up, we’re both fine,” he mumbled angrily. “Also, I have these sweet new stripes in my hair now.”

            Okay, so he actually had asked about those. _Is that normal?_ he’d said to Professor Granger, fingering the long white streak as he stared in a mirror. _I look like fucking Rogue_ , he would have said, except she probably wouldn’t get it.

            _It’s been documented in other cases of the Cruciatus Curse,_ Professor Granger had answered. _I don’t believe it’s exactly common, and, no, so far no one knows exactly what causes it. As you might imagine, no one has been exactly eager to do an in-depth study._

            “You look like Rogue.” Jace managed a laugh.

            Right, they’d seen the film together, hadn’t they? Because Jace was still huddled in his cloak, as if he’d never come out again, so he probably hadn’t read Ral’s mind just now.

            “Well, um, actually…” Jace sighed. “The cloak hasn’t been entirely cutting it since I woke up.”

            “Oh. Well, shit.”

            “It’s easier with people I’ve read a lot, and I can turn it off if I focus,” Jace explained. “But it is sort of _there_ if I’m not thinking too hard.” He put a hand to his head. “It’s okay. I’ll be okay. I’ve dealt with worse shit.”

            “You mean like this whole year?” Ral tightened his arm around Jace. “Look, I’ll, uh, I’ll try to keep my thoughts quiet, okay?”

            Jace rubbed a hand over his eyes. “It’s fine. Really.”

            There were huge, dark circles under his eyes. “When’s the last time you slept?”

            “Uh,” Jace replied, staring vacantly for a moment. “Oh—I mean, I was in the Hospital Wing unconscious till a couple of days ago.”

            “Have you slept since a ‘couple of days ago’?”

            He looked to the side. “I tried,” he muttered. “But you were—I didn’t know if you’d be okay—and it was my f-f-f—”

            “If you say it was your fault again, I will punch you,” Ral said. “And then I’ll probably get detention, and _that_ will be your fault.”

            Thank god, Jace laughed at that, though the sound was a little wobbly. “I haven’t really been able to sleep, I guess.”

            “Well, Madam Pomfrey keeps trying to tell me I’m not allowed to set foot outside of my bed, and you clearly need to be in bed way more than I do. So why don’t you stay here and sleep?”

            Jace gaped at him. “I haven’t been sleeping with you this whole semester and you—you want…”

            “I dunno if we’re quite at _that_ stage in our relationship yet,” Ral grinned, getting a frustrated scowl from his friend. “Yeah, yeah, of course I do. How many times do I have to tell you none of this was your fault, I don’t blame you, you’re my best mate, and—and—” _also I’m gay and have more than strictly platonic feelings for you and please don’t be reading my mind right now, Jace, because I don’t think I could deal with that on top of everything else,_ “—and that’s never going to change,” he finished, a little lamely.

            “Ral—I do not deserve you.”

            “No one deserves me,” Ral grinned. “I am too awesome for that. But if anyone _did_ deserve me, you’d be on top of the list.”

            “R-Right.” Jace tugged his hood down, but not before Ral saw the easy blush rising to his cheeks. “Okay. Well. I guess I _should_ try to get some sleep, huh?”

            “You should. You really should.” Ral tried not to reach too much as Jace laid down and slid back against him, but he was pretty sure Jace would have to be deaf not to have heard the low noise Ral made when Jace curled into his front. Thankfully, Jace didn’t say anything; he just took Ral’s hand and pulled it around to his chest so that they were spooning. Not quite how they usually spent the night together, but Ral was definitely not going to complain. Although he wasn’t sure how he was supposed to get any sleep at all.


	16. Mind Extraction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Ron returns, Jace meets Ginny, and Ral definitely does not punch anyone.

            It was three days after Jace had tentatively started going to class again. He still hadn’t quite managed to shake off his habit of needing Elspeth and Ral with him pretty much everywhere, even though he knew it was silly. There were only a few weeks of class remaining, or Jace didn’t think he’d even have bothered trying to go back. But something in him stubbornly didn’t want to give Liliana the satisfaction of keeping him out of class entirely for the rest of this semester.

            So he and Ral were walking to Potions, hand in hand. Neither Jace nor Ral had actually said anything about the fact they were now apparently in a handholding relationship, and Jace wasn’t sure he wanted to disturb the balance. He got to hold Ral’s hand, which meant that he always knew that his friend was right there and completely fine. And it gave him a peculiar warm sensation in the center of his chest, which maybe wasn’t surprising, because frankly he still desperately wanted to snog Ral until he couldn’t breathe. He just wasn’t exactly sure how to approach that discussion, and Ral hadn’t said anything either. Jace really wished he knew whether that was because Ral was trying to be careful with him, or whether it was because he honestly didn’t feel that way anymore. Technically, he supposed he could find out, but—no. He wasn’t going to do that. No.

            “Excuse me. Mr. Beleren?”

            Jace looked up and took half a step backwards. He didn’t recognize the man standing on the path in dark, unassuming robes.

            “Um,” he said, instinctively moving behind Ral. “Yeah, I’m Jace.”

            “My name is Venser, and I’m with the Department of Mysteries. Would you mind if I asked you a few questions?” With a flourish of his wand, he produced a sheaf of official-looking paperwork, which he gave to Jace to look over.

            “I—I don’t—”

            “We’ll be late to class,” Ral said, squeezing Jace’s hand firmly.

            “I can speak with your professor, or it can wait until after class if you prefer.”

            Jace, whose stomach was turning over uneasily, shrugged inside his cloak. “I—I guess—no, it’s okay, Ral. We can come now.”

            “Fantastic, this won’t take very long. I have a temporary office for the occasion.” He set off at a fast pace, his robes swirling behind him. Ral exchanged a look with Jace, then called over to Elspeth, who was trailing a few paces behind them with Teysa. “Hey, Elspeth, can you tell Professor Granger about this guy?”

            “She probably already knows,” Jace muttered to his feet, though Elspeth was nodding firmly. “We knew there’d be some kind of inquiry about all this shit.”

            “Yeah, well, I want her to know anyway,” Ral responded irritably. Despite his words, the hand that held Jace’s was gentle.

            “O-Okay,” Jace agreed faintly as they trailed after Venser.

            The man from the Department of Mysteries appeared to have set up shop in one of the old offices along the third floor corridor. Jace had passed it a fair amount. It was still mostly empty, with a desk and bookshelves lined with more dust than books, but a silver pensieve had been set up on the desk, and a sheaf of papers was scattered beside that.

            Venser bent over the desk, frowning, and carefully worried out one of the papers. “I’ll just need you to sign this,” he said, passing it over to Jace. “None of this will take long.”

            Jace stared down at it, a sudden chill suffusing his bones.

 

            _Memory Removal Acknowledgment Form_

_It has been determined that, due to a magical accident or other unfortunate incident, you possess a set of memories that are not your own. After a careful assessment of the circumstances, the Department of Mysteries has determined that said memories possess information vital for national wellbeing. As such, a professional legilimens has been tasked to perform a legilimency-based memory withdrawal and movement charm. None of your own memories will be affected. The side-effects of this procedure are minimal. Possible side-effects include minor dizziness, disorientation, and nightmares of empty spaces. All side-effects should fade within seven days. If any persist, please notify a healer._

_Please sign to indicate that you have read and understand the aforementioned procedure._            

 

_________________________________

 

            “Um,” Jace said. “Wait, what?”

            “Oh, sorry, I should’ve explained, shouldn’t I?” Venser looked up with what was probably intended to be a reassuring smile. Jace did not feel reassured. “I’m sorry it’s taken so long for us to send someone. There was quite a bit of paperwork. But you don’t need the Sleeper’s memories, and there’s a lot in there that will be useful to us.”

            It was very true that Jace had been trying not to think about the set of muddled memories he had acquired during his brief stint in Liliana’s mind. And he’d been seriously considering _obliviating_ himself, at least of those. But the way that Venser cavalierly spoke of just taking away something that was _inside_ Jace’s _head_ , when he’d never even _met_ the man before—

            “No, thank you,” Jace managed.

            Venser blinked at him. “Er,” he said. “I’m afraid it’s not up for debate.”

            Oh, Merlin. Jace could feel his breath snagging on something. He tried to take in more air, but he couldn’t quite manage it. “I—I—” he stammered.

            “It’s not a painful procedure,” Venser said, in confusion. “Honestly, I’m really sorry about everything that’s happened to you, but this will help. There’s no danger—I know the form is a bit scary, but it’s just covering all its bases.”

            “Leave him the fuck alone,” Ral said at this point. “I don’t care who you think you are, but no one else is fucking with Jace’s head if he doesn’t want them to.”

            “Mr.—er—” Venser floundered. “This is a matter of magical security. We need access to every possible angle of the Sleeper’s memories, and we can’t have them residing in the head of a seventeen-year-old boy.”

            Jace needed to say something, because he couldn’t, he _couldn’t_ let Ral get in trouble, but he couldn’t get out a single word. He didn’t have enough breath left, he didn’t have anything. He scrabbled for the clasp on his cloak, and Ral turned to him.

            “Jace. No. You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”

            Jace was shaking his head, but he wasn’t sure what he was shaking his head against.

            “I’m sorry if I sprang this on you too suddenly,” Venser apologized. “It really is quite important, but we’ve been under some pressure at the department. I can give you a few minutes to yourself, if that will help. It didn’t occur to me this would be a problem.”

            The world was collapsing inwards. Ral was saying something else, something about, “why the fuck would this not be a big deal?” but Jace couldn’t hear him, because—oh no—this hadn’t happened in years, but the roaring in his ears was being replaced by screams, and the dusty shades of grey of the office were peeling away in front of him to be replaced by charred ruins, flickering green in the light of his wand.

            Someone was screaming. It was loud. There was something over his ears, but it didn’t cut the sound at all. Someone else was saying his name, but he couldn’t find them, because he didn’t know where to look, and everything was dark and the fear was rising to drown him. His breaths echoed shallow in his ears.

            A chill of cold air ran down the back of his neck. The metal of the telescope burned cold against his hand, and the grainy image of a shooting star flickered across his vision. Paper rustled at his ear, and someone’s voice was saying his name over and over again.

            “What is going on in here?”

            Jace was back, cloak still over his head and his shoulders, but the fastening was loose, and there were hands on his, breath on his mouth.

            “Ral,” he gulped hoarsely.

            “Right fucking here. No one’s gonna touch you.”

            “He _punched_ me in the _face_!”

            Jace was still shaking, and it was hard to focus, but he managed to look past Ral to see that Mr. Venser was sitting on the ground, nursing what looked like a very broken nose.

            “Is this true, Mr. Zarek?” asked Professor Granger’s cool voice.

            “Nope,” Ral said insouciantly. “He was going to touch Jace, so I shoved past him. Guess I got him with my elbow.”

            “You _lying_ —”

            “Mr. Venser. Had you touched Mr. Beleren, you would most likely have injured him and probably yourself as well. Were you not aware that he is a very powerful natural _legilimens_? Mr. Zarek saved you from quite a nasty experience. Jace, are you all right?”

            “I th-think so,” Jace managed. He squeezed Ral’s hand to make sure he was still there.

            “Could someone do something about this?” Venser asked irritably. “I really need to get back to the reason I was—”

            “I will punch you again,” Ral blurted, and Jace groaned.

            Hermione sighed. “Mr. Zarek, please,” she said. “You are not in trouble yet, but maybe stop talking while you’re ahead?”

            “He wants to erase Jace’s memories!” Ral growled.

            “He _admitted_ to punching me!” Venser snapped.

            “That is ridiculous,” Hermione said coolly. “Wizards do not punch people. That’s what wands are for. Surely you’re not telling me you think Mr. Zarek cannot use that wand?”

            Venser sputtered. “They’re not his memories anyway! I was sent by the Department of Mysteries to collect the _Sleeper’s_ memories!”

            “I d-don’t,” Jace whispered, but it was so hard to talk. Finally, he managed to force it out. “I _don’t_ want anyone else in my head. Definitely not somebody I don’t even _know_!”

            “I have my orders,” Venser responded. “I told you, it’s a minor procedure and—”

            “I don’t give a fuck!” Jace responded, throat tightening. “They’re _my_ memories, and it’s _my fucking head_ and I just—just—”

            “They are _not_ your memories. They are the memories of the Sleeper, and—”

            “Er-hem,” Hermione cut in sweetly. “Perhaps you didn’t hear me when I said that Mr. Beleren is a _natural legilimens_?”

            “I—yes, I heard you, but what does that—”

            “Well, if you’ll recall the Ministry Statute on Modification of Memory, only memories that are acquired via learned magic constitute grounds for removal. Jace’s legilimency isn’t learned magic.”

            “That’s absurd—and in any case, we’d only need an extra signature—”

            “I’m not signing anything,” Jace stammered, and Ral’s arms tightened around him.

            “The boy is underage—”

            “I assure you, his guardian will sign no such thing. You’re lucky you’re talking to me and not Ranna, because she would do a great deal more than punching you in the nose for trying to coerce Jace into a mind modification he’s afraid of.”

            “You mean _Ranna Beleren,_ the—” Venser caught Jace’s murderous look and bit off whatever he’d been about to say. “Look, Professor, the Department of Mysteries believes this information is necessary for everyone’s protection. I promise you, even if you send me away—”

            “Absolutely no one will be touching Jace without his consent _ever again_ ,” Professor Granger said tightly. “I don’t care what you think you need it for, I will _personally_ —”

            Venser got to his feet. “This isn’t going to be the end of this.”

            The door opened. “I’ve heard more than enough. Get off of my school grounds.” Professor Potter entered, followed by two redheaded adults Jace didn’t recognize.

            Blinking rapidly, Venser took a step backwards. “Mr. P-Potter, I—”

            “Professor, actually,” Professor Potter said. “You might also remember that I’m the Boy Who Lived, as well as being on good terms with _pretty_ much the entire Auror Office. And I don’t know if you know Ron?”

            “Hi,” said the redheaded man. Professor Granger made a soft surprised noise as he stepped forward. “Ron Weasley? Think we met last year at that awful departmental mixer. You won’t be getting any support from my office, mate.”

            Venser’s lips tightened slightly. “Well, I hope you know what you’re doing,” he said. “The Sleeper’s dying quickly, and these will be the only memories left of some of what she’s accomplished.”

            “You want to know how to _rape someone better_?” Jace snarled incredulously.

            “No, we want to know how to better protect people, and sometimes the best defense is a good offense,” Venser replied testily. “There’s no need to be so melodramatic. I suppose your memories aren’t going anywhere. If you change your mind, here’s my card. You may be hearing from my office again in the future.”

            As soon as he was out the door, Jace ripped the card in half before leaning against Ral. “Can everyone please just leave me alone?” he said tiredly. “I’m late for class, Professor Malfoy will want to know where the hell I’ve been.”

            “Yes, of course, Jace,” Professor Granger said immediately. “You can go ahead to class and tell Draco I can give you both a late note if he requires it, though I don’t think he will.”           

            The redheaded woman who hadn’t spoken thus far put out a hand and helped Jace back to his feet. “Hi,” she said. “I’m not going to give you my card, but I’ll be around for a few days if you want to talk. I’m Ginny Weasley. Spent the first year of my Hogwarts career crying to a best friend who turned out to be Voldemort so I’ve got a bit of an idea of what you’re going through.”

            Her frank manner was disarming, and Jace managed a small smile at her. “Thanks,” he said carefully. “I’ll, um, I’ll drop by.”

~

            Hermione leaned back against the wall as Jace left the room with Ral still hovering in a way that was more like a mother hen than Hermione had ever seen in a seventeen-year-old boy and definitely odd for the notoriously irascible Mr. Zarek.

            “That was amazing timing, Harry,” she said, and then she turned to Ginny and to the third person in the room, whom she had been trying to avoid thinking about too hard. “Ginny. R-Ron. Nice to see you both.”

            Ginny gave her a bright smile and a little wave. Ron shuffled his feet awkwardly, ran his hand through his hair, and then stepped forward. “Hermione,” he said, and there was almost a stilted, foreign sound in his words. “I wanted to apologize.”

            She blinked. “What?”

            “I am an ass, a twat, and a pillock,” Ron said to his feet. “I was jealous, and I didn’t trust you, and I shoved all my shite at you without listening when you tried to help, didn’t help with any of _your_ shite, ruined our relationship, and I’m bloody afraid I’ve ruined our friendship as well. Which I miss. A lot. But I don’t want you to take me back as a friend if you’re not all right with that, I just wanted you to know that I know that I, Ron Weasley, am a giant great git, and I know it.”

            That hadn’t been what Hermione had expected at all. She felt her stomach turn over, tears welling up in her eyes. “Oh,” she sniffed, then her lips twisted to the side. “Can I punch you?”

            “I definitely deserve to be punched. You can punch me if it’ll help.” Ron shuffled awkwardly. “Although, I mean, you’re a wizard, aren’t you? Didn’t I just hear you say that wizards don’t punch people?”

            Hermione punched him. “Ouch,” she said, shaking out her hand. At least she’d remembered to keep the thumb on the outside. Ron stared at her with his mouth open, then put a hand to his jaw.

            “Mean right hook,” he said, working it as he rubbed it.

            She threw her arms around him. “Oh, Ron, I missed you _so much_!” she sobbed into his shirt.           

           He froze for a minute, then gingerly put a hand on her hair.

            “Merlin, I am really sorry, ’Mione. Oy, don’t cry. I let you punch me so you wouldn’t cry.”

            “Too bad,” sniffed Hermione. “You get to deal with both, you ass.”

            “S’pose that’s fair.”

            “He’s been practicing being less of a git,” Harry said affably. “Can I join in on this hug?”

            For answer, Hermione stretched out with one arm, snagged his shirt front, and pulled him into it. For one long moment, it was just three old friends once again, and everything seemed to swing into place. And then, of course, it got awkward—Ron shuffled his feet, Hermione felt her hair tickling her nose—but there was still a filled-in warm spot in the middle of Hermione’s stomach that had been aching a little up until then, and now it wasn’t.

~

            The sunlight that filtered in through the curtains of the Hufflepuff common room caught golden in Emmara’s hair. Jace lay back in her lap and looked up at her, and she smiled back at him. Her hand running through his hair was inexpressibly gentle. “Is this nice?” she asked, and he nodded, trying not to stare too hard, trying to figure out if there was something he needed to do to make this keep happening. Part of him wanted to touch her perfect breasts, feel the way her grey sweater rucked up beneath them, but part of him just wanted to look.

            The warmth of the sunlight became the warmth of a quilt as Jace slowly blinked his eyes open. The pleasant feeling left from the dream evaporated into horror as he realized he was lying next to Ral, back pressed against the other boy’s. A gasping sob rose into Jace’s throat, and the next second he was throwing himself out of bed. He struck the floor hard enough to send pain twingeing through both knees, and he barely stopped himself from crying out.

            He’d been having good dreams about Liliana. He’d been having good dreams about the woman who’d violated him, who’d tortured his best friend in front of him. Jace thought he was going to be sick. In the bed, Ral made a sleepy little questioning noise, and Jace scrabbled to his feet. He had to get out of the suddenly-suffocating darkness.

            Stumbling into the corridor, the bright yellow lights helped calm his racing heart, but he still felt close to vomiting. Jace slid slowly down the wall, trying to stifle his sobs, desperate not to wake anyone else up.

            “Oy, you okay?”

            Jace sniffed, gulped, and gasped, hastily trying to press the tears back into his eyes. “F-Fine,” he muttered and looked up to see the red-haired woman who had introduced herself as Ginny Weasley.

            “You look about done-in,” she said. “Want to come by my room for a butterbeer and tell me about it?”

            “As long as I’m not bothering you, I guess.”

            Ginny shrugged. “I never sleep well in strange beds, so, no, you’re not bothering me.”

            Miserably, Jace trailed after her. A few steps down the corridor, he realized that Kallist had followed him and was now dribbling concernedly on his shoes. “Kallist, I’m fine, go back to Ral.” Jace waved a tired hand, but the little cloud just vibrated slightly, as if he were shaking his head, and spat lightning. “Sorry,” Jace mumbled. “I think he might get your room wet.”

            Ginny shrugged. “It’s not really my room anyway,” she pointed out. “C’mon in.”

            She waved him into a cosy little room, starting a roaring fire in the fireplace with a flick of her wand and a muttered incantation, then went over to the cupboard in one corner and came back with two mugs and an amber bottle.

            “Here,” she used her wand to vanish the top of the bottle and poured a generous helping of the foaming liquid into a mug, which she handed to him. “Knock yourself out.”

            “Thanks.” Jace sipped at it automatically. The warmth of the liquid was grounding, he had to admit.

            “Go ahead, sit.” She waved at the little sofa in front of the fire. “I’ll take the arm so you don’t feel crowded.”

            Awkwardly, Jace sat down. The pillows sank under him, and he had to grab at the sofa arm to avoid overbalancing.

            “Oh, yeah, should’ve warned you, sorry.” She hopped onto the sofa arm on the opposite side of the couch, which Jace appreciated. Kallist floated into his lap.

            “Don’t drizzle,” Jace told the cloud sternly, and Kallist spat a happy lightning bolt at Jace’s nose.

            “So,” Ginny said, taking a long draft of her own butterbeer. “Bad dreams?”

            Jace hunched his shoulders inwards, wishing he could say yes. Well, he could, but what was the point of deceiving everyone? He was pretty sure he deserved whatever response he’d get. He shook his head. “No,” he forced out through gritted teeth. “Good ones.”

            “Oof.” Ginny groans, running a hand through her hair. “Fuck, those are the worst.”

            “Wh-What?” Jace had been prepared for responses running from awkward sympathy to horrified disgust. He hadn’t been expecting what sounded like actual commiseration.

            “Yeah, back when Harry and I were still together, I once had this really— _domestic_ dream about Tom Riddle. You know. Voldemort. We were baking a pie or something together, everything was really fluffy and happy, and that was it, there wasn’t anything dark or weird or bad.” She sighed. “I woke up at 2 am and didn’t feel like I deserved to be sleeping near Harry, so I went into the kitchen and got very, very drunk.” She winced. “Noooot a great idea when I had an important match the next day. Harry tried to be Very Supportive, but he’d no idea how to even start.”

            Jace swallowed. “I hate myself,” he said in a low voice. “I mean, how could I dream something good about her? I was asleep next to Ral. I got him _tortured_. She _tortured_ him.”

            “You can’t control your brain,” Ginny said. “I mean, you just can’t. It’s horrible. It’s awful. Dreams like that are one of the worst things I can remember having over the past decade, and I can remember some pretty fucked-up things. It’s not your fault.”

            “But it _is_ , I’m so sick of people telling me it’s not.”

            “Me, too.” Ginny shrugged. “I mean, Jace, would you say an eleven-year-old girl was at fault for being duped by Voldemort?”

            He shook his head.

            “Most people wouldn’t. But _I_ did. Because I _was_ that eleven-year-old girl, and I shouldn’t’ve listened to him. I should’ve seen through him, or asked for help, or done anything to stop the possession before it was too late. I was so lucky I didn’t get anyone killed. That’s—what I was most grateful to Harry for. Not so much that he saved my life but that he saved everyone else’s.”

            “But—”

            “But this is _you_?”

            He glared at her. “Okay, I get it, I’m selfish.”

            “Okay.” Ginny smiled at him. “Then _be_ selfish. Take care of yourself.”

            “I don’t—I don’t deserve to.”

            “Well, that’s not very selfish.”

            “God, are we doing fucking logic traps now?” Jace hunched his shoulders inward, trying to stop himself from throwing his damn mug at the wall.

            Ginny shook her head. “No. I’m just not too good at this. Honestly? I dealt with a lot of this shite by getting preeeeetty smashed. It just sucks. It’s not going to magically get better, no matter what I say. And I’m really sorry about that.” She pulled a face at him. “I’d give you some firewhiskey, but Hermione would probably skin me alive.”

            He had to laugh a little at that. “I just want to not _feel_ like this, but not having the feelings is almost as bad as having them. I know my mum gets worried when I act like I don’t care, but I—I don’t _want_ to care? It really hurts.”

            “It’ll get better.” Ginny tugged at her long hair. “I’m sorry. I’m so very fucking sorry that I can’t tell you something more useful than that. But, Jace—just hang on, okay? Your friends care about you. Even if you’re going to blame yourself and hate yourself and feel awful, remember that they want you to be okay. If you can’t take care of yourself for yourself, take care of yourself for them.”

            Jace squirmed, thinking about Ral’s reaction if he knew the kinds of things Jace was thinking about himself right now. “Ugh. I’ll try.”

            “Best thing you can do.” Ginny gave him an awkward smile. “Um, cheers?”


	17. Dream Cache

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jace asks Draco for help.

            As he gave the Potions classroom a final once-over, Draco nodded in satisfaction. The sixth-years had all completed their last lesson, and considering that two of them had been in comas for several weeks of term, one had been recently petrified, one tortured by the Cruciatus Curse, and his star pupil had been barely scraping passing marks because he’d been understandably distracted by Amortentia, that was nothing short of miraculous. Not to mention the fact that, for the first time in his life, Draco actually felt hopeful about his personal life.

            Harry was really trying. Draco had reluctantly agreed to start dating him at least partially because he’d been certain Harry would give up the idea after a day or two. When he hadn’t—when he’d kept on insistently asking Draco to come down to Hogsmeade with him, or popping his head into Draco’s office for a quick word or a quick kiss or a quick snog, or just sending him stupid little romantic notes via owl—Draco had gotten used to it faster than he would have believed possible. He’d even managed to reciprocate, himself, on a few occasions, although he wasn’t really good at romantic. But the look on Potter’s—on Harry’s face had been worth it. As had the sex. The sex had definitely been worth it.

            There was a quiet knock on the door. “Come in,” Draco called, as he flicked his wand to dispose of a particularly nasty-looking stain that was determinedly eating through the woodwork of Mr. Zarek’s desk. Ral had never quite lost his habit of experimenting with different combinations of things on the side, although he had at least stopped instantly doing things that his textbooks explicitly warned against.

            The door opened, and Jace poked his head round. “D’you have some time?” he asked. His voice was low, and his gaze directed somewhere in the vicinity of his feet.

            “Yes, I think so.” Draco checked the time. Classes were over for the day, and he was supposed to meet Harry, but not for a few hours. “What is it, Jace?”

            “I—I’ve been trying to get my independent study to work, and I think the theory’s sound, but I’m doing something wrong, and I don’t know what it is.”

            Leaning back against the desk in front, Draco raised an eyebrow at him. “I thought you were told you didn’t have to finish the project you’d planned for this semester? Taking an extension due to illness is fine.”

            Jace shuffled. “I—I know. And I probably won’t do the write-up until next semester. But, um, I really want to finish this.” He sighed in defeat. “It’s for Ral.”

            “Ah, I see.”

            “Can you at least look at my notes?”

            “Of course. I’ll come up to the tower if you like.”

            “Would you? Th-Thanks.”

            Jace’s workstation, which, in contrast to Ral’s, was usually quite organized, was covered in ingredients, laid out in haphazard bunches. His notebook and an instant camera were near the edge of the table, covered in a fine powder Draco thought was probably silver dust. There was a stack of blurry photos peeking out from underneath the notebook—that had been something that had come out of Hermione’s experiments with Mr. Zarek. The camera was actually a Polaroid of Muggle make, but the batteries had been replaced with a magical power source. Although the resulting photos didn’t move, they developed immediately, and several of the students had started using them to keep track of magical experiments they were performing. One of the complaints that Jace’s year especially kept bringing up—especially Ral and Jace—was that it was stupid to try to recreate a potion from a verbal description when you could take a picture of what it was supposed to look like. Draco had started looking into redoing their textbook with a set of example pictures, but he hadn’t had the time to compile it yet.

            Jace flung himself into the stool in front of the workstation with a sigh. Taking out his wand, he prodded at the Potion growing cold on the side of the desk. It was a dull blue, and there was a single white poppy floating on the surface. “Yeah, this didn’t work.”

            “Tell me what you were trying to do.”

            Gnawing at his thumb, Jace seemed to consider this. “I…I could show you,” he whispered. “I just…I just need to know what the steps are supposed to look like and—and how you usually extract memories for a pensieve. I don’t. Know how to do that myself. And, um, I’m—I’m not feeling good. Mirko went back to the Forbidden Forest today, and I—I—thought I’d be fine. I should be fine. I just.” He shut his eyes. “When it didn’t work and didn’t work and didn’t work—” He cut himself off, wrapping his arms around his chest. “Sorry,” he whispered.

            “Would you like a hug?” Draco asked gently.

            Jace’s shoulders went up and down. “Don’t think it’ll help.”

            “All right.”

            “But—but—if you could take this and do it w-with me…” Jace’s hands hovered at the hasp of his cloak.

            Jace had already spent an hour or two curled quietly in the back of Draco’s head, his body resting on a nearby bench or couch, his mind dormant. He’d also spent some time with Hermione and Ranna, who had been on and off campus every few days since making a full recovery. Draco didn’t know if Jace had also been sharing minds with the sixth years, but he suspected he had been. At the very least, Jace had taken to trotting down the hall to Ral’s bedroom again at all hours of the night, which was—comforting. Right. Draco had passed him several times when he was, well, going to Harry’s room.

            “Do you want me to?” He didn’t think Jace would say no, but he wanted to make sure Jace knew he always had a choice.

            Jace nodded. “Yeah. Please.” He undid the cloak and took it off, folding it carefully over the stool. “Only—can I do something a little different? I—I really want to help make it.”

            “Yes, you can.”

            Raising his wand, Jace pointed it carefully at Draco. “ _Legilimens_.”

            It was hard not to flinch at the feeling of Jace touching his mind. Draco had never been as good at occlumency as Harry, but he’d been good enough, and he’d had more than enough people fucking about in his head for one lifetime. Taking a deep breath, Draco reminded himself that this was _Jace_ , and then carefully walled off the memories that Jace shouldn’t have access to, either due to the possibility of traumatizing him, or due to the level of inappropriateness. Jace was skilled enough that he probably could get through most of Draco’s walls if he tried, but Draco trusted that he wasn’t going to.

            A little more fumbling, and then there was a sudden sense of recollection as Jace pushed a thought into his mind.

            Draco raised his own wand. “ _Legilimens._ ”

            It took them a moment to reorient, as they carefully tested the connection to make certain that it could be undone at any time without damaging either one of the constituents. They didn’t want a repeat of the incident with Teysa. Once they were as sure as they could be— _yes Jace I’m fine I promise—_ they focused on the potion. It took them a moment to remember the idea, running Draco’s finger down Jace’s notes, but then, there it was. They sized it up, considering, and decided with relief that the theory was sound.

            Jace’s frustration boiled to the surface along with the images of hours spent trying to get the base potion to mix correctly, and it wasn’t surprising he’d had so much trouble. Correct theory or not, a potion like this would have been more suited to a uni student than a boy still at Hogwarts. But they used Jace’s hands anyway, despite the increased difficulty in translating the muscle memory, just slowing a little to accommodate as they began to chop up a stack of mauve carnation petals.

            The work was difficult, more difficult than most potions Draco made these days, since he was hampered by unfamiliar hands and cluttered thoughts, but it was exhilarating at the same time. There were a number of innovative ideas scrawled in the margins of Jace’s little notebook. The potion itself was a modification of the original Bottled Dreams potion to be able to hold memories like a pensieve—instead of catching a dream while you were having it, this was intended to turn a memory into a dream for someone else.

            This time, when it was heated, the potion exuded a fine silvery vapor that curled above the liquid, caught the white poppy, and lifted it into the air for a few seconds, while the whole thing changed from milky grey to sky blue. They let out a sudden, relieved breath. It had worked, which meant it was ready for the last step. The memory-turned-dream.

            Jace’s hands were trembling, and they took a moment to steady them, because this was the most difficult part. Draco knew how to extract his own memories for a pensieve, but he didn’t know how to braid them together the way Jace did, and they would have to draw on both skills in order for this to work properly. And it would have to be Jace’s hand, Jace’s wand, as Jace braided and Draco extracted.

            There was a heartbeat of indecision, of fragmentation, as Jace tried to curl back in on himself, but a mental word of encouragement— _You can do this, Jace, better than anyone_ —pushed them forward. They lifted the wand to Jace’s temple, and Jace did something Draco didn’t understand even though it was happening right in front of his mind, binding the silver cords of memory together as if they were threads on a spindle— _not threads, scenes, like cutting out a bit of one photo and gluing it to another one, like the memories in Ral’s head of playing with the moviemaker on his mum’s laptop, making a character disappear just by snipping three seconds of the scene out of the middle_ —but he understood how to pull the resulting strand out from Jace’s head, how to pull and pull and pull until it twisted around the wand, and how to push it from the wand into the potion, stirring and stirring with a steady hand. The steam evaporated and the potion darkened.

            Draco shivered as Jace withdrew, and he lowered his wand. There was a strange moment of vertigo as he realized he was alone in his head again, and for a brief second, nothing seemed to work the way he remembered. Then the feeling passed, and the two of them were standing together and looking down at the potion they’d made.

            “Excellent work, Jace.” Draco reached out with a hand, then remembered Jace hadn’t wanted a hug, and paused. The boy didn’t seem to have noticed; he was looking down at the potion was a peculiar look on his face. After a moment, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

            “Fuck,” he said, finally. “I did it. I really did it.”

            “You really did.” Draco chose to ignore the obscenity, thinking wryly that after six years of Mr. Zarek, many of the teachers were becoming what the headmistress considered appallingly lax on the subject of profanity. “You had some exceptional insights, and next semester, I hope you’ll write up a careful description of your thought process and the process of making the potion.”

            “I didn’t think I could,” Jace murmured. “Thank you. This is great.”

            “This was entirely you. Your theory, your hands. I just helped out a bit with the experience.”

            When Jace looked up at him, he was smiling broadly, and Draco was struck with the thought that he didn’t think he’d seen Jace smile like that since last year.

            “I'm going to give it to Ral tonight."

            Draco felt his lips twitch upwards in a smile as he thought about Harry waiting for him. “Good luck.” Judging from the way Ral looked at Jace, Jace shouldn’t need it, but it seemed like the thing to say.


	18. Moonlit Wake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jace says goodbye to Emmara, and Ral and Jace finally have a long overdue discussion.

            The moon was rising above the treetops of the little glade, a thin, silvery-white crescent. Jace looked up at it, took a deep breath, and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. His other hand was currently occupied with Ral’s, and the other boy awkwardly tightened his grip as Jace’s breathing changed.

            It had turned out to be pretty easy to slip away from the school by night these days—all they’d had to do was ask for permission to sleep on the lawn, and then set up a drowsiness potion that Kallist had blown over towards the prefects. Guiltily, Jace shifted from foot to foot, but it wasn’t really betraying anyone’s trust, because it was for a good cause.

            “Okay, we’re all clear!” Chandra called from the other side of the clearing, and Jace took another deep breath. Everybody was here.

            “ _Lumos_ ,” he croaked, and the end of his wand flared with white light. After a moment, there was a murmured chorus of echos, and eleven more lights blossomed in the thick darkness of the Forbidden Forest. Chandra hurried into the clearing, holding onto Nissa’s hand tightly. Jace didn’t think they’d stopped holding onto each other since Nissa woke up, not that he was in any position to judge, he supposed.

            “Ouch,” Ral said irritably at his ear. “You’re squeezing too hard.”

            “Sorry.” Jace forced himself to relax his hold on his friend’s hand. Okay. Everyone here was a friend. Everyone here would help. He just needed to tell them what he needed. Taking another deep breath, he let go of Ral’s hand for long enough to give a halfhearted wave at everyone assembled in the clearing. Elspeth was closest to him and Ral, standing between Teysa and Ajani. Behind her, Tamiyo and Narset waved their wands at him. Dack’s wand hung down over Narset’s shoulder, but he grinned at Jace from his position slung down over their backs. Gideon and Koth, who had been checking the other side of the clearing, were just coming back, their little lights twinkling as they moved. Above Jace, Kallist created a miniature ball of flickering light, and behind him, he felt Mirko’s cool presence.

            “Hi, um. Thanks for coming. We haven’t really had a Sleep Club Meeting for, um, a few semesters now, I guess. And this isn’t exactly Sleep Club stuff, but I—” Breathe in, breathe out, keep talking. “—I trust all of you. This is Teysa Karloff, by the way, I know you guys have all met her, but, um, I guess she’s sort of an honorary member now. Anyway.”

            He found himself pacing in front of the lake’s edge. Jace wasn’t quite sure why he’d chosen this particular location, but it was far away from the school, and a part of the forest that wasn’t terribly occupied by much of anything—partly because it was at the edge of Mirko’s hunting range, so anything staying here would have to constantly fight through a lowgrade sense of unease. Which wasn’t currently affecting any of them, but that was because Mirko was specifically protecting them, as Jace had asked them to.

            “By now I guess everybody knows what Liliana Vess did to me,” he managed, and it came out almost easily, although there was still a soft, bitter refrain in Jace’s head of, _Why didn’t you notice?_ “So, the thing is. When I stopped her from—when I finally stopped her from cursing Ral—” That came out less easily. Ral’s hand fell from Jace’s shoulder to his waist, and, to his surprise, Ral pulled him quietly against him in a half-embrace. It only lasted for a moment, but the contact was enough to steady him. Ral was all right.

            “You saved my ass, in fact,” Ral murmured in Jace’s ear, and Jace glanced at him in surprise. “Nah, you’re not projecting, I just know how you think.”

            “I went into her head so that I could stay ahead of her.” Jace locked eyes with Teysa for a moment, and she gave him a discreet nod. “And it worked bloody well, I’d have killed her if Professor Lovegood hadn’t stopped me. I still wish I had.”

            “Wish _I_ could’ve killed her,” Ral muttered under his breath.

            “But I’ve still got the memories in my head.” Jace pressed a knuckle against his forehead. “Which fucking sucks, frankly, and if that weren’t bad enough, the Ministry tried to get them away from me. I don’t want them to have these, I don’t think they _should_ have these, because I don’t trust a bunch of random strangers who are part of the government that thought it would be a great idea to experiment on me as a child.” His voice was rising, and he had to pause and take a deep breath. “I want these out of my head, but I don’t think I should erase them, because someday it might be really important for someone to have this knowledge.” He managed to crack a faint smile. “I’d just really rather it was someone I trusted.” Okay, he was doing great, everyone was nodding. He just needed to explain the next bit as well. “There’s something else, too. Emmara was—she was a real person.”

            He saw it the moment they all realized. Ral had known already, of course, but Jace hadn’t told anyone else. He hadn’t been _able_ to, until now. Elspeth’s mouth opened in a ‘O’ of horror; Teysa’s mouth twisted to the side. Tamiyo and Narset both put their hands to their mouths, Dack staring from behind them with wide eyes. Chandra actually twisted to the side, letting a sudden burst of flame loose from her outstretched hand. She stared at it in consternation for a moment, before Nissa pulled her close and held her.

            “She was a good person,” Jace continued. He had to keep going, or he wouldn’t be able to finish saying what he needed to say. The horrified, sympathetic look on Ajani’s face might choke off his ability to speak if he didn’t hurry. “We were going to be really good friends, but I—I only knew her for a few days before she died. Um. She was actually a few years older than us. She’d finished up at Beauxbatons the year before, and she was studying to be a healer.” His face was wet, and his voice was cracking. “And she really liked dolls, so I—I got her this.” He pulled the little blonde doll out of his robes. “I was going to give it to her as a thank-you for putting up with—with the amount I talked about R-Ral for n-no good reason.” Fuck. It was getting hard to talk around the tears.

            Ral’s hand tightened around his again. Gideon was nodding encouragingly, one hand shaped into a fist. Jace inhaled deeply. “I never gave it to her, because—well. It didn’t seem right anymore.” Because when you were suddenly dating someone, it seemed strange to give them a thank-you present for listening to you babble about someone you thought you’d had a crush on and now suddenly didn’t. Because his whole relationship with Emmara had changed. Because it wasn’t Emmara anymore. Because—

            It was hard to see the little doll through the haze of tears over his eyes. Grinding his teeth together, Jace forced the words out. “I don’t want these memories anymore, I don’t want to see her dying. I don’t want to see her being murdered from the point of view of the person who murdered her. So I’m going to take the memories out and put them in this and obliviate myself.” He held up the little vial of pensieve potion that he, Ral, and Teysa had quietly removed from Professor Malfoy’s locked Potions cupboard. They probably could’ve just asked, and maybe before this semester Jace would have, but right now he felt that the fewer people who knew about this without being directly involved the better. “I feel like the Ministry might’ve been right, though, a little bit. I mean, maybe these will be really important someday. Maybe it’ll become imperative that we have some of this knowledge, to—to protect people. So I want to be able to get them back if I have to. But, um, I don’t really trust a lot of people right now.” Jace ran out of breath, his words tripping over themselves as he went faster and faster because he had too much to say, and it was getting harder and harder to say it.

            Staring directly at the silver glow of his wand helped because it narrowed the world around him to that single mote of light. “I trust all of you.” The words came out monotonous and hollow, sounding fake to Jace’s ears, but he meant them as much as he could. “If—if you don’t want to help me, that’s fine, but it’d be good if you could leave now. What I want to do is hide the pensieve with the doll somewhere in the Forbidden Forest and then split up all the memories so that all of you only remembers a bit of where they are. So that if they’re needed, we’ll all have to agree that they’re needed before we can find them. But, um, I—I understand that you might not want me fucking about with your head like that, so—so—of course anybody who wants to can leave.” He thought about mentioning the redundancies he was going to try to build into the spell in case of someone dying or something worse, but he decided not to. A flicker of Teysa in his mind commended him for being appropriately paranoid.

            There was a long pause, and Jace shut his eyes, letting only the bright pink-green afterimages dance in front of his retinas. There were a few murmurs, and then Chandra said loudly, “Glad to see you’re still an idiot, idiot. Of course we’re going to help.”

            Jace took in a sudden, hasty breath and tried to brush the tears away from his eyes, but they were flowing too fast for that. “Thanks,” he managed to get out through a sobbing hiccup. “Okay. Can all of you come a little closer so I can be sure I have enough light?”

            The first step was going to be the hardest, because Jace was going to have to perfectly copy what Professor Malfoy had done to extract Jace’s memories for the Bottled Dreams potion. Jace had really hoped he’d do a proper incantation, but he’d done it wandlessly. Of course. That whole thing had been a horrible exercise in trying to keep secrets while sharing someone else’s mind, but then he’d already kind of been doing that every time he’d gone into Ral’s head lately as well.

            Shutting his eyes again, Jace pointed his wand at his temple and focused on the remembered sensation of the memories traveling from a mind to the wand, focused on the strange new tug and coiling and the not-quite-words Draco had used to move them. At first, it felt like his head was going to come apart into two pieces, but he gritted his teeth and yanked harder. There was a moment of unraveling tension, and he felt the memories begin to flow into the wand.

            He had to open his eyes to begin the transfer from his wand to the pensieve vial, and he had an unpleasant moment of vertigo when he thought he was going to lose the spell, but though his vision blurred, he managed to hold the wand steady. The memories glistened in the wand-light as he kept unraveling in his mind, pushing them toward the vial. It became a little easier once there was arc from his mind to the vial, the liquid pulling the memories along, almost seeming to make a place for them. Thank god for his Legilimency lessons; Jace was pretty sure he’d never have been able to manage this if he hadn’t already been intimately acquainted with playing around with the inside of his own head.

            By the time the last of Liliana’s memories slid sluggishly into the vial, Jace was sweaty and trembling, and the only reason he was still upright was because of Ral’s firm arm around his waist. He leaned backward against his friend, trying to get his breath.

            “You okay?”

            “Just—give me a minute.”

            _If you’re lucky, you get to be snogging Ral in a few hours_ , his tired brain reminded him. Just had to get through this. Pushing himself up against Ral’s arms, he staggered upright again. “Okay. Since no one’s left, I’m just going to stasis it under the lake—”

            “Let me do it, Jace.” He didn’t know when Elspeth had gotten so close, but it was a relief to be able to pass the vial to her, especially since he knew he still had to perform an _Obliviate_ spell on himself and a modified version of it on the rest of the students after that.

            “Thanks,” he whispered, though he still had a small twinge as he let go of the vial. After a pause, he also handed over the doll. “I guess I was thinking—she could sort of watch over it,” he mumbled. “Kind of silly, but…”

            “It’s not silly at all.” Elspeth’s voice was steady as a rock, and her hand pressed his in the sturdy way only she could manage. “You think it’ll be best under the lake?”

            Jace nodded, and Nissa stepped forward. “I’ll levitate it,” she offered, and Chandra, who also had her mouth open, shut it embarrassedly. “I’m better at fine control than you are,” Nissa said mildly, and Chandra scowled but nodded.

            “ _Wingardium leviosa_.” Elspeth cautiously slid the vial into the doll’s clothes and let go of them as Nissa spoke the incantation. The little doll bobbed outward towards the center of the lake and hovered there.

            “ _Stasis temporis et stasis loci_ ,” Elspeth said clearly in her Scottish lilt. A wavy blue glow formed around the doll, shimmering inchoately and then forming into an oval blob. She and Nissa looked at each, clearly a little unsure of what to do next, and Ral sighed. “Someone get the water out of the way,” he said. “Someone who isn’t me, I’m crap with water.”

            Both Narset and Tamiyo stepped forward, and with two neat wandswirls and some murmured words, a magical vortex formed in the center of the lake; then the water seemed to peel away to both sides, leaving the muddy lake bottom stripped and clearly visible in the center. Nissa lowered her wand, and the doll, with its vital cargo, floated slowly downwards into the center and lodged there. A wand movement from Koth drew the mud up to half-cover it and partially hide it from view. Little by little, Narset and Tamiyo let the water trickle back over it until the top of the lake was placid and undisturbed once again, nothing but a cold misty haze hanging over it.

            “Goodbye,” Jace whispered, his pocket where the doll had lain feeling light and empty.

            He shivered, then raised his wand to point at his own forehead again with a sense of heady relief. “ _Obliviate_ ,” he whispered, and then he was blinking, and they were gone. Liliana’s memories were gone. He sagged against Ral again.

            “Fuck, Jace, warn us, will you!” Ral was trembling. “You were out for almost five minutes.”

            Oh. He was sitting on the ground with Ral behind him, and his hair was wet. “Did you get lakewater in my hair, Ra—” He looked up. Ral’s eyes were red, and he swiped at them as he looked away.

            “Yeah, I’m fucking incompetent, deal with it, okay?”

            “I—um, I still have to do the last spell.”

            “That’s great, you can do it sitting in the mud because I’m not catching you if you fall over again.”

            “We need to leave the clearing first,” Jace pointed out. “I mean, it’s not going to be much of a secret if we’re all still here when I get rid of the memories.”

            “Yeah, well. Shut up.”

            “You can do it once we’re all back on the lawn,” Elspeth suggested. “That way, we’ll be back quickly.” _And if anything goes wrong, we can shout for the teachers_.

            “I heard that thought,” Jace muttered giddily, and Elspeth gave him a strange look, but he let her help him to his feet.

            Walking through the forest with Kallist hovering overhead, Mirko’s soft footsteps behind, and both his arms slung over Elspeth’s and Ral’s shoulders, Jace felt more himself than he had in days. He wasn’t entirely sure he wanted the walk to end, ever, but he still had stuff he needed to do tonight. And he wasn’t sleepy, exactly—more exhilarated. He was bloody exhausted, of course, so tired that he could barely move his legs, but his mind was clear. It was like a Butterbeer high but—clearer. As if everything was light and air.

            The Sleep Club stumbled back onto the Hogwarts lawn to see that the Drowsiness potions were still slowly exuding smoke, and the sleeping bags were still exactly where they had left them, but it didn’t _look_ the same to Jace. The darkness had seemed vaguely menacing before, and now it was welcoming. The flickering flames of the fires the teachers had lit to keep them warm looked cozy and homey instead of eerie. And as Elspeth and Ral helped him back to his sleeping bag, Jace surged to his feet, took their hands, and twirled them around in a clumsy circle before collapsing to his knees with a giggle that turned into a full-blown laughing fit.

            “Oh, great, he’s finally gone bonkers,” Ral said in exasperation, which _also_ seemed hilarious. Jace curled over himself, clutching at Ral’s knees, and Ral went over foreward and collapsed to the ground beside Jace. He ruffled Jace’s hair awkwardly. “So—your other spell?”

            After another several seconds, Jace managed to contain the giggles and drag out his wand. “I’ve actually got a good feeling about this,” he said, smiling confusedly at Ral. Ral blinked for a moment, then smiled back, and Elspeth patted his shoulder.

            “That’s good, Jace, but you are being a little hard to predict right now,” she said sensibly. “Just be careful, all right?”

            He didn’t want to be careful; he wanted to let himself fall into the feeling of being all right for just a little longer, but he knew that Elspeth was right, and he nodded. Taking a deep breath, he looked at everyone around him. “I’ll be careful,” he said. He looked down at his wand, then felt Mirko’s presence at his back, sighed, and laid the wand down carefully.

            “I don’t actually need it for this,” he said, not entirely sure who he was talking to, and he reached up and undid the clasp of his cloak.

 

~

            God, what an evening. Jace laughing was good, but Jace passing out for five minutes definitely wasn’t. At least despite the flashiness of setting his wand down, the second spell he’d done had only taken a few moments, and Jace’s eyes had been open for all of it, glowing a bright, eerie blue. Now, he really should try to get some sleep—and Ral wondered when he’d started fussing like a mother hen—but Jace had run off somewhere else to get something else. Just how many things had he been planning to do tonight?

            With a groan, Ral heaved himself upright again, trying to figure out where his friend had gone. Nearby, Elspeth was looking around in confusion as well. “You didn’t see where he went either?” Ral grunted. “Fuck, I mean I’m glad he’s feeling better, but—I dunno how long this is going to last.”

            “At least the spell worked.” Beside her, Teysa nodded.

            “Mirko went with him,” she added. “Don’t worry, I don’t think Mirko will let anything happen to him.”

            Moisture trickled into Ral’s hair, and he glanced up. “Did he tell Kallist to guard me or something? I haven’t seen him leave Jace’s head since—since I woke up.”

            “I wouldn’t be surpri—Jace, there you are!”

            “Thank god,” Ral muttered under his breath as Jace came cannoning back, somehow having apparently moved from not being able to stand up on his own to running halfway across the school grounds. “You think you can try going to sleep now, Jace?”

            “I, uh…” Jace rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. “I got you a Hanukkah present.”

            Ral blinked at him. “What?”

            Elspeth colored suddenly and exchanged a look with Teysa that Ral couldn’t read. “We’ll just leave you two alone, shall we?” she said brightly, and Teysa gave an exaggerated yawn.

            “I’m so very tired,” she agreed theatrically, and the two girls immediately moved away towards their sleeping bags, giggling together. Ral watched them go suspiciously, then looked back at Jace.

            “Well, I mean—it’s the first night of Hanukkah tonight, right?” Jace suddenly looked concerned. “I got that right, didn’t I?”

            “Oh, um, yeah, I think so.” Ral waved a hand vaguely. “I haven’t been paying much attention.”

            “Anyways, I guess I’ve been waiting all day to give you this. So, um, here.” Jace held out a medium-sized crystal vial filled with dark liquid. “It’s—I finally got the Bottled Dreams potion to work. It’s not a long dream, but—maybe you’d like to try it?”

            “Have you been waiting for this all night?” Ral asked. Jace shuffled awkwardly. “Okay, okay, give me the damn potion.” It wasn’t like Ral _didn’t_ stay up half the night working on stuff in his tower anyways.

            The potion was dark blue, with a faint silvery sheen. He sniffed at it, but it didn’t have much of a scent. Maybe a faint hint of mothballs. A sip told him it tasted of nothing much either, just a vaguely watery Gatorade.

            Ral put his hands behind his head and lay back on the sleeping bag. He felt a little drowsy, but nothing more. There was a momentary feeling of weightlessness. The warm body beside him on the bed shifted, and he blinked, shifting against them as well. For a moment, nothing else happened, and then Jace rolled up onto his elbow and looked down at Ral. His blue eyes widened fractionally, and then he grinned, ducked his head, and kissed Ral on the mouth. It was clumsy and wet, but warm. Ral wanted to hold onto the feeling forever.

            When Jace pulled back, it was only to flop sleepily down beside Ral again, and now Ral caught sight of the sky above his head, deep velvet blue and clear—a familiar sky. The sky from the Astronomy Tower. A single little twinkling mote of light hung for an instant and then descended, whipping across the horizon and vanishing in a brief burst of fiery glory.

            He blinked and opened his eyes again, to see that Jace was sitting cross-legged on the grass beside him, chewing on his knuckle.

            “You asshole,” Ral said, and Jace’s face fell, eyes scrunching together in sudden pain, his breath indrawn in a hiss. Ral’s stomach turned over. “Jesus, not like that! For—acting like you didn’t know that I—uh—you—” he paused. “Jace, you’ve been in and out of my head for the last week. You _do_ know I’m as gay as the stupid halls people will be decking in a week, right?”

            “I—I mean, yes, I know you’re gay,” Jace shifted, the expression on his face turning abashed and something halfway between hopeful and still devastated. “But that doesn’t mean that you think about _me_ —I mean I’ve been trying not to check what you feel like about me, I didn’t want to invade your privacy too much—”

            “Oh. My. Fucking. God.” Ral rolled up on his knees, grabbed the back of Jace’s stupid neck, and dragged Jace’s stupid mouth down so he could kiss him on his stupid lips. Jace gasped against his mouth, muscles stiffening under Ral’s hand, but before he could kiss back, Ral pulled away long enough to say, “How I feel about you is that you’re my best friend, you’re an idiot, you’re annoyingly sexy, and I’d like to euphemistically sleep with you as well as literally sleeping with you all the time. And if you don’t snog me right now I will hit you with my pillow until you beg for mercy.”

            Jace made a noise that was halfway between a gulp and a laugh, and then muttered, “Well, I wouldn’t want you to fuck up your pillow,” before leaning in for another kiss. This time, he had a hand on Ral’s shoulder and one one his cheek; Ral shifted up onto his knees for a better angle and slid his own hands into Jace’s cloak around his waist. Jace moaned into his mouth, and Ral took the opportunity to deepen the kiss, tracing his tongue around Jace’s lips and probing into Jace’s mouth. Jace made another noise, low in his throat, and his hand dropped to Ral’s shoulder.

            As Jace pressed closer against his front, Ral took the opportunity to slide backwards and grab Jace’s hips so that they both went over, Jace falling on top of Ral, flush up against him. Gulping out a breathy noise at the contact, Ral let his hands snake up Jace’s back, holding him close, and Jace ducked his head, letting their lips meet again. God, this whole horrible year had been officially _so fucking worth it_. Ral could take a few more sessions of the Cruciatus Curse if it meant getting to snog Jace senseless later. And the noises Jace was making in his throat—soft little pants and moans—were both adorable and highly arousing.

            Rolling to the side, Ral shifted their positions so that Jace was on his back leaning up into him, then dragged his lips down the corner of Jace’s mouth and began to kiss down the line of his jaw and then up under the vulnerable hollow of it.

            “Ral,” Jace whispered. “Oh, _fuck_. Oh, that—mmmn—”

            “About damn time.”

            Jace gasped and tried to sit up; Ral sighed and lay down on top of him, looking up to find that Chandra and Nissa were standing over them. “I swear to god if you ruin this for me,” he whined.

            Chandra grinned. “I wouldn’t dream of it,” she said. “Just needed to make sure you two were finally shagging.”

            “We are not shagging!” Jace protested.

            “Yeah, even with the fires, it’s a little too chilly out to be having sex.”

            Chandra’s grin widened, and Nissa went red. “If you say so,” Chandra responded. “Anyway, carry on, I’m just—glad—that’s all.”

            “Chandra,” Jace said. “Uh—you were totally right, by the way. I deserved to be punched in the face.”

            “You did what?” Ral scowled at her, and Chandra shifted uncomfortably.

            “I’m sorry, Jace,” she said, “I didn’t know about the spell. It was dumb.”

            “You were worried about Ral. You get a pass.”

            “What the—no, she doesn’t! No one is allowed to punch my boyfriend in the face!”

            “I’m really sorry, okay?”

            “Ral. Leave it.” Jace’s hand landed on the back of Ral’s neck, and for an instant, every piece of thought processing equipment in Ral’s brain short-circuited. “So I’m your boyfriend?” Jace asked. He sounded like he was trying way too hard to be casual.

            “Yeah, sure, as long as you want to be.” Ral tried to match it with his own casualness, but he wasn’t entirely sure if he managed.

            “Yep. Yep. Boyfriends, sounds good, great, bye now, Chandra, bye Nissa.” Jace’s cheeks looked faintly red, and Ral didn’t think it was just the firelight.

            Nissa waved and started to move back in the direction of what was probably her own sleeping bag, tugging Chandra with her, but the other girl paused for one moment longer. “Pro tip, if you squeeze his ass, he makes the most adorable little squeaking noises.”

            Ral bit his lip and grinned, looking back at Jace, who was red to the tips of his ears.

            “I do not!” he protested. “Just because we had _one_ snog a year ago, she thinks she knows everything about m—”

            Ral pinched his ass. Jace squealed. Nissa and Chandra fled, giggling.

            Swatting Ral gently on the arm, Jace surged up and pressed a quick kiss to the corner of Ral’s mouth. “Happy Hanukkah, Ral.”

            “Happy New Boyfriend Day, Jace.” Jace stuck out his tongue, and Ral pressed him down into the sleeping bag again.


	19. Safe Haven

            “I fucking hate Christmas music,” Ral announced loudly as he, Jace, Elspeth, and Teysa walked out of Card Factory, where they’d spent entirely too long browsing a selection of mostly silly, cheap crap, partly for fun, partly to try and find little things for one another for Christmas and Hanukkah. Since they’d come shopping together, it was an adventure, as things happened like Elspeth quickly passing a mug to Jace to buy for Teysa while she wasn’t looking, or Teysa very obviously commenting loudly on how cute the puppy was on the front of a Christmas card, practically holding Jace’s head as Ral snuck towards the cashier. Jace had pretended he couldn’t feel Ral’s mind even through his cloak as he went past.

            “Aren’t you a model of holiday cheer?” Teysa paused and leaned against the wall. “Give me a moment, please.”

            “Hey, if they were playing _Hanukkah_ music, I wouldn’t complain.” Jace raised both eyebrows. “Okay, yeah, I totally would. Look, festive music just gets so boring, okay?”

            “As I said,” Teysa repeated, leaning on her cane. “A model of holiday cheer.”

            “Says the person who’s wearing all black.” Ral himself was in jeans and an aggressively blue sweater with two stars of David on the front and a llama. Block letters across his chest proclaimed, “HAPPY LLAMAKAH!” and Jace honestly was not sure if he was trying to troll his parents or proclaim his support. Teysa, as Ral had pointed out, was wearing a black miniskirt and a black v-necked shirt which had _Noblesse Oblige_ picked out on it in shimmering rhinestones. Elspeth kept glancing over at her and turning red, which Jace found hilarious.

            “I look good in black,” Teysa responded. “No one looks good in llamas.”

            “I will fight you.”

            One of the other shoppers paused momentarily, looking critically at Jace, who instinctively colored and stepped back towards Ral, who immediately put a reassuring hand on his lower back. “Hey man, nice cosplay!” the person who had been scrutinizing him exclaimed.

            “Uh,” said Jace. “Th-Thank you?”

            “No problem! Happy Christmas!”

            “You, too?”

            Jace blinked at the person’s retreating back, then looked at Ral. “What?” he said.

            “Google it,” Ral told him.

            “Oh, come _on_.”

            “You need to practice. Google it.”

            “I could just take off my cloak and read your mind,” Jace grumbled, but he pulled out the smartphone that Ranna had bought him on Ral’s suggestion as an early Christmas present and frowned down at it as he carefully navigated to google and typed it in. He frowned as the page loaded. “Oh-kay,” he said slowly. “So now I have a new question. Who do they think I’m dressed up as?”

            Ral shrugged. “Some anime character, probably.”

            “And now I have a _new_ question…”

            “Google it.”

            “Ral!”

            “What’s that?” Teysa asked, indicating a blue booth standing in the middle of the shopping center.

            “It’s an instant photo booth.” Ral looked at them. “D’you want to try it?”

            “Yes,” Teysa replied immediately. She smiled at them. “I want to try _everything_.”

            Even more than Jace, Teysa was enjoying her time in the Muggle suburbs. After the semester he’d had, all Jace had wanted for Christmas was not to let Ral out of his sight and preferably stay as far away from anything magical as possible, so he’d jumped at the chance when Ral’s parents offered to let him stay with them over the break. Elspeth and Teysa would be taking the train up to spend Christmas with Elspeth’s family in Greenock, but it was still the day before Christmas Eve.

            Teysa was clearly having the time of her life. “Show me that,” she’d snapped when Ral pulled out his own smartphone and promptly proclaimed it “brilliant.” She asked everyone possible a fierce battery of questions, ranging from simple (“what’s a battery?”) to complex (“what’s the rent on a flat in this area? Do you know what kinds of things send it up or down?”). The only person who was even remotely capable of answering was Natalka, Ral’s mother. Ral answered anything he was interested in, but if it was something he found dull, he sometimes wouldn’t even open his mouth.

            The instant photo booth was fortunately empty, but it was also tiny. Jace gasped as Ral elbowed him in the side. “Ow?”

            “Sorry, there’s not a lot of room, I think they only expect about two people at once. It’s supposed to be for couples.”

            “Well, we’re two couples,” Elspeth pointed out. “I mean we could just do two-person photos.”

            “I want all of us in one photo,” Jace protested. “You’re all—you’re all—” he stalled out, unable to get the words out, and reached out and took Elspeth’s and Teysa’s hands and squeezed.

            “Let’s just do it quickly, then, before I die of suffocation,” Teysa sighed.

            Jace shut his eyes for an instant, taking a deep breath, just to feel his three friends close to him. There was a bright flash.

            “Oh, come on, Jace!”

            “Sorry!”

            “Still can’t breathe…”

            By the time they squeezed back out of the booth, all four of them were helpless from laughter.

~

            Jace leaned against the door as Ral flung himself down onto the bed with a groan. They’d just dropped Elspeth and Teysa off at the train station, and it had taken a solid hour to get back. “We could’ve apparated,” Ral moaned.

            “We definitely couldn’t have, we haven’t learned it in school, and we could’ve gotten splinched.”

            “You’re no fun.”

            “I just like you being in one piece!” Jace sank down onto the bed beside him. “That taxi ride was godawful though.” He glanced over at Ral, whose eyes were closed and who was giving every indication of relaxing, and shuffled his feet nervously. He’d been planning on asking something once Elspeth and Teysa had left since before the break, but it was really, really difficult to get the words out. And kind of embarrassing, even though it probably shouldn’t be.

            “Hey, Ral?”

            Ral cracked an eyelid at him. “Hm?”

            “D’youwanttohavesex?” Jace blurted in a rush. They’d spent practically every minute they had alone at school snogging each other till they couldn’t breathe, and it was fucking amazing. And difficult to stop from going further. And Jace was pretty sure Ral wanted to go further as well, and he _might_ have accidentally woken up in the middle of the night last night and looked over at what Ral had open in his laptop browser and then promptly decided not to tell Ral he was awake. Which he really needed to confess to doing.

            Ral opened both eyes. “Fuck yeah,” he said succinctly. “Let me just get my wand and lock the door, okay?”

            “Also, um,” Jace continued, sitting nervously on the edge of the bed and swinging his legs beneath it, “I might’ve woken up and seen what you were watching last night…”

            Deadbolting his door, Ral reached over and snagged his wand from its place on the windowsill. “Oh, you mean my research?”

            “Research?” Jace sputtered.

            “Elspeth and Teysa were leaving today, and I thought there was a good chance you’d, um, be up for a shag. You didn’t think I’d go into something like this with no idea what I was doing, did you?”

            Jace’s face felt hot. “It didn’t exactly, uh…I mean…”

            “Okay, so maybe gay porn doesn’t turn out to be the _best_ resource.” Ral scratched the back of his head. “I was kind of hoping for better camera angles or something? I found a couple wiki-how articles, though. And a pretty good site called Scarleteen, but it was, like, five am at that point and I kind of crashed before getting very far into it.”

            “Oh my god.” Jace covered his face with his hands, and then peeked through his fingers, laughing.

            Ral was laughing as well. “So I mean _maybe_ we should stick to, uh,” he waved his hands, “not sticking things—into other—um—to non-penetrative intercourse. Just. For the first time.”

            “Maybe.” Jace relaxed marginally. Some of the stuff he’d seen on Ral’s screen had been frankly a bit alarming. “Um. I guess we should, you know, get undressed?”

            “Good first step.” Ral nodded, then paused and stared at Jace for a long minute, before finally grabbing the hem of his own t-shirt and pulling it over his head.

            Jace had seen Ral undressed before; they’d changed in the same bathrooms, after all. But the context and the determined set of Ral’s naked shoulders made him swallow. He had to tear his eyes away. Carefully, he undid the fastenings of his own cloak and let it pool around him on the bed, building his mental walls slowly as he did so. His own t-shirt was sweaty around the armpits, and he paused in embarrassment before forcing himself to wrench it over his head and off.

            They looked at each other, both of them red in the face, until Ral defiantly reached for his belt, undid his jeans, and slid them and his boxers off in one motion. It looked quite impressive, until he tripped trying to get his socks off and nearly fell over. Jace surged up off the bed and steadied him, hands on his shoulders.

            Of course, that meant he was right in front of a naked Ral. Which definitely meant he had to kiss him. One thing led to another, and a moment later, Jace was on the bed moaning into Ral’s mouth, and Ral’s hands were on his hips, sliding his trousers off. Jace made a low noise as he found himself lying naked underneath his boyfriend.

            “Okay, just—just a sec—” Ral gasped as he clumsily raised his wand. “Better make sure I do this part right, anyway.”

            “Huh?”

            “Protection charm.”

            “O-Oh.” Jace felt his face heating up again. “Right. I should’ve thought of that, I’m sorry, I—”

            “Shut it, Jace. I’ve had Muggle sex ed, we got like nothing at school, and it’s not like you had parents growing up anyway, so _they_ couldn’t even tell you.”

            Jace squirmed and subsided, letting Ral concentrate, but paid enough attention that he ought to be able to cast the charm himself for future reference. It didn’t seem too complicated, which was a relief. It was a good thing, he reflected, that he had turned seventeen the week before break, and a _very_ good thing that Professor Granger had seen fit to inform the authorities. Jace couldn’t imagine anything worse than a group of Ministry wizards showing up to investigate unsupervised underage magic while he and Ral were shagging.

            “Okay.” Ral set his wand on the bedside table and turned back to Jace. “Want to do this?”

            Jace nodded fervently.

            It became rapidly very difficult to think. Everything was devolving into a series of images and impressions. Ral’s hand on his shoulder; Ral’s mouth biting down on his collarbone. Ral’s back beneath his fingers—Ral made a high noise as Jace’s nails bit in slightly, but when Jace paused, Ral gasped out, “good noise, good noise,” and kept going. Ral’s body pressed against his. Warmth and sweat and—oh _god_ —Ral. And Jace’s mental walls were crumbling. He didn’t want to be alone in his head anymore, he wanted—he wanted—he _reached_ —then paused—then looked at Ral.

            “Um—” he said, then stalled.

            Ral paused immediately. “You okay? D’you need me to stop?”

            “No, oh god, no, I want this,” Jace blurted. “I want _you_.”

            An unfairly arousing lip bite and a tilt of the head. “Excellent. But what’s up, then?”

            “Can I—get into your head?”

            “ _Fuck_ yeah.”

            It wasn’t like the walls crumbling or coming down; it was like a door opening. And Ral was there; Ral was _everywhere_ ; they were moving together, and Jace knew he was saying something over and over and over again, but he didn’t know what it was. All he knew was that there was heat and pleasure and _Ral_.

            Finally, they collapsed onto the bed together, sweaty and panting. “That was great,” Ral said limply, and Jace turned over and kissed his cheek. “D’you think you told me that you wanted this enough? I think you could have mentioned it a few dozen more times if you’d really tried.”

            So that’s what he’d been saying. Jace waited for his heartbeat to approximate a stable rhythm, then laughed. “You ought to know,” he protested, then looked down at himself. “Oh god. I’m covered in—uh—” He put a hand to his head. “Is it in my _hair_? How did you _manage_ that?”

            “Fuck if I know. Let’s go shower, I’ll get it out.”

            As they waited for the water to heat up, Jace reflected that it was a good thing Ral had his own bathroom. Jace had never in his life not had to share with at least one other person—even the cozy flat he shared with Ranna only had a single bathroom. And, god, would it have been awkward if they’d had to sneak over to a main bathroom and risk running into Ral’s parents.

            “I’ll scrub you, you’re way stickier than I am. Perks of being on top, I guess.” They stepped into the shower, and Jace sighed with relief as the warm water washed over his shoulders.

            Then he gave Ral a light punch in the shoulder. “Jerk.” He paused, then stepped in, giving Ral a hard, full-body hug. “There. Now we’re both sticky.”

            Ral wrinkled his nose and laughed. “You could’ve just said you wanted to touch my naked body some more, _boyfriend_.” He reached for the shampoo. “Let me get your hair, though, seriously.”

            Jace’s cheeks were aching. God, had he actually been smiling too much? That hadn’t happened in well over six months. Ral was starting to hum something off-key that might’ve been one of the Sorting Hat songs, or maybe one of the few non-Christmas pop tunes that had been playing at the shopping center.

            “Lean your head forward a bit,” Ral instructed, and Jace complied. The rough touch of Ral’s fingers scrubbing across his scalp made him wince, but they left traces of warmth in their wake.

            _I’m safe_.

            “Huh?”

            “Oh, sorry.” He hadn’t meant to broadcast the thought, but it wasn’t really a problem. “I said, I’m safe. You make me feel safe.” He knew the feeling wouldn’t last, _couldn’t_ last, but it might come back. And maybe feeling safe now, after everything that had happened—maybe it was enough to be going on with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all but the epilogue. I hope you've enjoyed reading this fic as much as I enjoyed writing it.


	20. Epilogue

            The cheery music and noise of the Christmas party washed over Hermione like a particularly happy tide, and she snuggled down into the fat armchair by the fire. Her armchair today. Harry and Draco were too busy flirting dangerously near the mistletoe; Professor McGonagall was laughing and actually dancing with Professor Flitwick as bad Christmas music played, and the rest of the teachers were kindly letting Hermione have it, knowing that she’d had a touch of the curse that Liliana Vess had cast mainly on the female students. Luna was curled on the arm of the chair; every so often she would get up, get both of them more eggnog, and circle the room saying _Happy Christmas_ and draping people with sugarplum wreathes to “keep the nargles away.”

            There was a rattling noise at the window, and Hermione glanced over to see that Kallist was jiggling up and down impatiently outside, making the latch vibrate up and down. A sudden cold chill went through Hermione, and she got out of the chair to let the little cloud in. He performed a sudden, rapid loop-the-loop, and then spat a slightly damp letter at her. Hermione blinked. How on earth had he been carrying it?

            She ripped the top of the envelope and rapidly skimmed the letter’s contents. To her relief, it looked as if it was nothing but a Christmas card; a still photograph fell into her hand. Ral, Jace, Teysa, and Elspeth grinned up at her, all squished together against a generic background. Teysa had an arm around Elspeth’s shoulder, and all three of them were piled around Jace in an almost protective formation. Hermione smiled as she went back to her seat.

            And found it occupied. Luna gave her a wide, bright smile from her new position in the armchair.

            “That’s _my_ seat,” Hermione objected.

            “Oh, well, you know, I thought it still could be?”

            “O-Oh!” Hermione felt herself smiling even as she rubbed the back of her neck bashfully. “All right.” She lowered herself carefully into Luna’s lap, then, feeling daring, turned and kissed her girlfriend’s cheek. It wasn’t as if their relationship was a secret, but so far, they’d been very restrained in public. But it was a _Christmas_ party, and it wasn’t as if there were any students around. Luna would likely not even be a teacher here after next semester.

            Luna blushed and made a pleased humming noise.

            “All right, now I need to read this letter from Jace,” Hermione said, and flattened it out in her lap. “I’ll read it out loud, shall I?”

 

_Dear Professor Granger,_

_Happy Christmas! Ral says to thank you for the charms you gave him._

 

            Hermione choked on her eggnog, and Luna patted her back.

            “What’s wrong?” she asked mildly. “What charms is he talking about?”

            “Um.” Hermione felt her face getting hot. “I, well, I, um, found Mr. Zarek in the Restricted Section cursing up a storm—literally—so I gave him some, er, some books of my own. On healing. And protective charms.”

            “Ohhhhh.” Luna nodded. “You know, I really feel that sort of thing ought to be covered in class. It’s remarkably annoying how difficult it is to find the information, and it seems like every so often really quite bad things happen. Just because someone doesn’t know.”

            Sighing, Hermione leaned back against her. “I mean, I agree, the first time Ron and I—erm—I just used Muggle methods, because I didn’t know where to look for the charms. But I’m not sure this is something I feel capable of bringing up with Professor McGonagall. She already gave Harry and Draco a _look_ the other day, and all Harry’d done was put his hand on Draco’s shoulder.”

            “Well, she is a bit old-fashioned, I suppose,” Luna agreed. “But I imagine if we compile some statistics, we could convince her, don’t you think?”

            “There’s a load of Muggle statistics on this sort of thing, I wonder if she’d accept that,” Hermione said meditatively. She sighed. “I suppose we can try. But I’m not going to think about this till after Christmas.” She returned her attention determinedly to the letter.

_I hope you’re having a good holiday. I’m doing pretty well out here in Muggleland—Ral just hit me for that. I know I sound snarky, but it’s actually great. Mr. and Mrs. Zarek are letting me sleep in Ral’s room and no one’s bothered by the screaming nightmares. I think they’re getting a bit better, slowly, I guess._

            “He’s doing better.” Tears rose to Hermione’s eyes, and she brushed them away. Luna took her fingers and kissed the tips very gently.

_I wanted to also let you know that I’m going to take my NEWTS at the same time as everybody else. Thanks for offering to let me delay them a term, but I don’t want to graduate later than the rest of my class. I’ll figure out how to catch up if I need to. Ral and I are planning to go on to Uni, not do any of the Auror stuff or anything like that—I’d like to make sure that I can protect people from dark wizards, but I don’t really trust the Ministry anyway, even though I’m sure Mr. Weasley is very nice._

            “Well, yes, Ron’s fine,” Luna agreed, “but I think Jace is very wise to want to go to Uni.”

            Hermione nodded. “I’ll see if I can look out any schools that have strong Muggle Studies programs,” she murmured. “I know Ral, and he’s going to want somewhere he can do research on applications of Muggle technology. Jace is easier; he just needs somewhere with a good Potions program. I’d say Legilimency, but honestly, from what Harry says, he’s already beyond most people’s capabilities. I’ll see if there’s anyone really highly regarded, but…” She shook her head. “Well, I’m sure he’ll look into it as well.”

_Please check on Mirko for me. They tried to come back to Ral’s house on the train because I think they were worried, and it was really sweet, but I didn’t think it was a good idea for him to show up in the Muggle suburbs. Let him know I’m doing okay._

            Hermione looked up to where a blurred, grey figure in an approximation of a cloak was swaying back and forth near the punch bowl with Nearly Headless Nick and a floating spoon that was probably Peeves. Mirko appeared to be having a great time, and also possibly to be tipsy, if a boggart was capable of being in such a state. She smiled to herself and made a note to tell him that Jace was doing well later on.

_Thanks for everything and I’ll see you at the end of break._

_Jace_

           

            Carefully, Hermione folded the letter closed. “Well, he certainly seems to be doing better now,” she said. “As well as can be expected, at any rate.”

            Fingers slid between hers, and Luna’s lips were pressed into her hair. “People heal,” she said. “Honestly, they do.”

            “I know,” Hermione whispered. “But I wish he didn’t have to. Not from this…”

            Still. She looked across the room to where Harry had finally maneuvered Draco under the mistletoe and was kissing him energetically, over to where a pink-faced McGonagall was busily transfiguring a Christmas wreath, and then over to where Mirko was now gently drifting down the table, apparently deep in conversation with the Grey Lady, though how they could understand each other, Hermione wasn’t sure. She looked back down at the photo in her lap, at Jace surrounded tightly by three friends who would probably die for him, thought about him talking about starting at Uni soon, about not letting his experiences this semester stop him from graduating on time.

            And then she turned back to look at Luna, who was now sniffing her hair in a matter not unlike an enthusiastic puppy. It was a little odd, but adorable. Things had changed since the day she’d found a crying child in the ash-covered shell of a destroyed mansion. And—not for the worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading :)

**Author's Note:**

> Many, many thanks to paperclipminimizer for beta-ing and checking my timeline, as well as answering all my questions about Harry Potter. Thanks also to Juri, FrostandSilence, and everyone on Sketchydoodles' Vorthos server for listening to me rant about this thing as it took shape.


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